We talked about how the different gels had effected light and asked the class which colours we should use to make a photogram. They selected orange and red colours and we used the scraps to create and experimental photogram. I found this image very striking -like an undersea scene from a tropical reef. A long time back in a previous session, I had used an analogy of sunburn when talking about photograms. The children hadn’t forgotten about this and wanted to try a photogram using suncream to see if it blocked out light. Using an acetate sheet so that the developer didn’t get filled with suncream, we swirled the Factor 50 with our fingers. Exposed to light and developed, it didn’t completely block out the light -or not as much as I had expected -or only where it was very thick.

Mrs Wilson hadn’t tried out the darkroom since her inital experiments so she made a photogram using buttons. They realised that the orange buttons were filtering the light better than the other buttons and made a second attempt using only orange buttons. I was so impressed by their approach. They were integrating the information from previous sessions in order to make this decision. And the result was very pleasing as well.