Ashton Park Sixth Form - Day 1

On the 11th April I had my first day at Ashton Park Sixth Form at the Photography department.

I had emailed ahead and asked Anita if I needed to prepare or bring anything with me. She told me no, as I would be helping in a year 10 GCSE class loading pinhole cameras.

I arrived at the prearranged time of 1.30pm and headed straight to the photography room, where Anita and the technician were entering. After some quick introductions, the technician and I went into the darkroom where she refreshed me on loading pinhole cameras.

When the year 10s came in, they were split into two groups, and one came with us into the darkroom. The technician explained how pinhole cameras work and split them into smaller groups with one camera per group. I helped to load the cameras. This is achieved by taking the masking tape top off of the camera (in Ashton Park the cameras are made from beer cans), opening the black electrical tape shutter, rolling up the photographic paper, and placing it inside. Sometimes it needs to be adjusted in order to see the light coming in through the shutter. The lid is then replaced and the shutter closed. It is then ready to be used. All of this is done in the darkroom with the safelight turned on as to not expose the paper.

When waiting for the year 10s to come back to develop the paper, me and the technician talked about our degrees and the creative arts, and she gave me some website addresses as I spoke about the possibility of running on a film set. We then advised the year 10s how to develop their images. All of their images came out overexposed (totally black), so I advised them to have the shutter open for shorter than the recommended time of 7 seconds. Each time they came back in to develop I loaded their cameras for them, and taught some of them how to load it themselves.

While waiting for the year 10s to come back, I sorted out all the enlarger filters. They were mismatched and often did not have a whole set per enlarger. While I did this, the technician helped a smaller group of girls make positives out of their pinhole images from the previous week.

After the lesson finished, I tidied up the darkroom. I put all the enlargers up to their highest height and put the safe cover over the lights, and tidied the space around them. Before I got rid of the darkroom chemicals (as they develop their images in trays), I had to "re-fix" some of the images, as the students tend to not keep their paper in the fix for as long as they should, meaning they will go yellow.

I then helped tidy up the classroom as there was a lot of double-sided tape backing on the tables as some of the students were mounting their work from the previous week. I collected up their work and organised it. I then cleaned excess water off of the prints made today and hung them over the sink in the classroom to dry.

In total, I was there for 3 hours. I will be in the same time next Thursday, and then we will discuss me coming in to help out in the exams, which are one day for AS level students, and three days for A level students. I will also be helping out at the Summer Ball on the 10th May.

3 hours