last day shooting with Year 6

Today it was raining and grey. Not great for photographing with the kids. We tried to encourage them to use the puddles to good effect working with reflections and so on. Its interesting to see how differently children behave with the camera. Some are quite timid and need encouragement to experiment. Several of them have only taken around a dozen images. Others are much more confident, assertive over the technology and determined to get a good image. We saw quite a few children rephotograph carefully to get a sharp, well composed image today. I think I was clearer about the potential pitfalls this week. For example I warned them about getting too close to the subject and I think we possibly have less focus problems than last week as a result. 

Now we know about the slow computers we built extra time into the schedule to allow for copying the images across. In fact we had Y6 volunteers set up the named folders for us over their lunch break. We had a couple of technical problems with cameras. We were using an odd one out - a Hewlett Packard - to make up numbers and it decided to freeze halfway through a session. Another camera was behaving strangely when we tried to transfer images and wouldn't let us delete the images from the memory card. Luke and I managed to figure it out between us eventually and most of the children have a fine set of images to begin working with next week.

Whilst the kids are doing well and I'm sure we are going to have some great prints, I am beginning to get a wee bit concerned about whether this project is sustainable across four years. Already we have seen a lot of repetition in the images they have chosen in Y6 and I am not sure that Y5, Y4 and Y3 will be able to diversify the range. But maybe that's the point. Perhaps the repetition of the same things shot in different ways will be an important creative dimension to the final presentation and say something important about the school environment. I may have to guide this editing role to some extent - or maybe not. We'll just have to see what happens...