Mr Duckett’s Year 9 class have recently completed the ‘Light and Waves’ unit of the Year 9 Science course.

After lessons spent investigating reflection and refraction, dissecting a bovine eye and then drawing parallels with a pinhole camera, we used catering-size coffee cans that had been rescued from the staffroom by Ms Mackay, our resourceful Science Technician, to create our own pinhole cameras.

We used a hammer to push a pin through the base of the can creating the aperture for the light to enter and then we cut photographic paper to fit the inside of the lid with the help of Lily Ferro and Isobel Gallagher working in the dark – literally . Using a blob of blu-tak to act as a shutter our cameras were ready and we went out onto the Bird Bath Lawn to pose for photos.

Shutter times were chosen based on Mr Shaw’s advice and Mr Duckett’s first few attempts at taking photographs, so groups had to hold poses for up to 25 seconds while the film was exposed, a far cry from the instant selfies that can be captured with modern phones.

As this experiment recreates the days before digital cameras, the next stage was to develop the images, so groups worked in teams to use developer and fixer to reveal the almost ghostly images. The excitement of having to wait for the image to develop was real, with groups capturing amazing images. Or at least some groups did as Mr Duckett put his photographic paper into his camera the wrong way round, so we will have to retake the class photo!

Many thanks to Lily, Isobel, Mrs Mackay and especially Mr Shaw for his advice on everything to do with pinhole cameras!