Wednesday, April 21

Up at 6:30, and arrived at the school around 8 a.m., so I could set up the darkroom. While I was setting it up, I noticed that I could see light coming in around the door. So I fetched Hubbie who used black poster board and tape to frame the door. I used two large, black garbage bags to block the light at the bottom of the door.

The third grade class met at 9:20, and we all went outdoors to shoot pictures on the playground with 35mm one-time-use cameras.

The second class worked with oatmeal box pinhole cameras. Three students at a time met me in the darkroom to load photography paper into the boxes. These kids are at just the right age to love being scared, and the darkroom, with it's eerie red light brought out the boogity-boos in them. "I feel a spider crawling on me!" "That red light makes your face look like it's bleeding." "It's like a cave in here." "What if we get locked in here all night!"

After all the student's cameras were loaded, Hubbie took the class outdoors to do timed exposures, while I waited in the darkroom. The reason I don't out with the students is because it's difficult for my eyes to adjust to the darkroom after I've been in the sun. Even with a safe light on, it takes too long for me to see adequately enough to develop the images from the cameras.

We had assigned a time to each student for when to open and close their camera. It's a new world every time we work with pinhole cameras...even with educated guesses, the proper exposure time is always a crap shoot. This morning, we overestimated the number of seconds it would take to get a good image, so most of the photos were overexposed. But we did get a few reasonable shots...enough to convince the kids that pictures can be taken without sophisticated optics.

Following this class, we came home for lunch. But first, we dropped by the one-hour service to drop off the cameras the third-graders used this morning. The photos from yesterday had been developed, so we paid for those and brought them home.

The afternoon classes were a repeat of the morning ones. This time, we reduced the exposure time to the cameras and got a few more decent shots. The last class was third-graders, who went out to use 35mm one-time-use cameras.

After school, we went by the one-hour service to drop off the last batch of cameras, and pick up the ones developed today. Then we went to the office supply store to get the black and white poster boards we'd ordered.

At home, I looked at all the snapshots, and arranged them according to the ones I like best, so I can discuss them with the students on Friday.

Some students did a great job of following instructions in completing the assignment, while others ignored the plan and just shot pictures of each other. One fifth-grade girl did an outstanding job, and I plan to mention to her that she needs to do more photography. She really has an eye for it. It's always a pleasure to run into a student like this, who does the work for the joy of it. I think she's bound to become a camera bug.

Supper tonight was leftover Spanish rice, with fresh tomatoes topped with cottage cheese. Mother went home afterward, and Hubbie and I cut part of the white poster board into 8x10 pieces for students to use in mounting their sunprints.

Later, we watched two movies....the first one was "Patricia Cornwell's, The Front," from the Lifetime Movie Channel. Andy McDowell stars in this movie. A Boston District Attorney (McDowell), needs publicity and orders a detective to re-open a homicide case.

The second movie was "The Mothman Prophesies," a 2002, PG-13, feature starring Richard Gere. A man and his wife are about to buy a house, when they get in an auto accident. The wife dies from her injuries, but not before she leaves a notebook full of drawing of moth-like entities. The wife thought she saw one fly at the car, which is what caused her to lose control of the car. The husband saw nothing, but we the viewers get a brief glimpse of it. Two years later, the husband, a reporter, goes to Point Pleasant, West Virginia, where folks claim to have "seen something."