Turning a classroom into a camera

It takes only 15 minutes for Rich Bergeman to turn a classroom into a camera — all he needs is black plastic, blue tape and a small hole cut into a pie pan.

Photography is magical, he tells the fifth-grade students at South Baker Intermediate School.

“It’s the only way to make a picture out of real life. It’s really a magical thing,” he said. “We’re going to see how magical it is by turning your classroom into a camera — a big one."

Bergeman lives in Corvallis, but this summer he was the resident artist at Crossroads Carnegie Art Center. He spent July in Baker City working on his photography, and unveiled his exhibit at Crossroads this month.

This week he is teaching the fifth-grade classes about cameras, and will finish his stay Friday night with a presentation for Literary Night at Crossroads.

To introduce how a camera works, Bergeman showed the students one of his simplest — a cigar box with a hole in it.

The exposure for this camera takes about 20 minutes to capture an image.

“Not so good for a football game,” he said with a smile. “But if it’s a rock or a tree, it works pretty good.”

The first step to transforming the classroom was to block out all light by securing black plastic over the windows.

As he did that, the students made created an aperture (that’s what lets light into a camera) by cutting a hole in an aluminum pie pan. They made two different sizes — one using a lid from a Snapple bottle and one using a quarter.

Those apertures were then taped over a hole in the plastic, allowing a tiny bit of light into the room.

Lights off, and silence as all eyes adjust to the dimness.

Then: “Whoa!” and “It’s a house!”

The image is blurry and upside down, but the trees and cars from across the street are identifiable on the classroom wall.

Bergeman then handed out screens and encouraged the kids to stand near the hole in the window.

Suddenly a clearer image shows up, in color.

The concept of photography was discovered in much this same way, Bergeman said.

“They realized that, in a dark tent with a small hole, they could see what’s outside,” he said.

Then he asked the students to experiment by seeing which size hole offered the best picture. (The smaller one.)

Next he taped a lens over the holes, and the students again used their screens to capture the image.

Suddenly the trees and cars look even more like the real things.

“Oh my gosh! That’s perfect!” someone says. (It’s hard to recognize voices in the dark.)

“It didn’t take long before people realized that if you had a glass that’s concave, you can magnify it,” Bergeman said.

The image, though, wasn’t quite perfect.

It was upside down. (This brought laughs when Principal Betty Palmer walked across the street and waved to the students.)

Later, with the lights back on, Bergeman drew a picture to explain why it was upside-down.

Light rays, he said, go in a straight line. He drew a tree, then traced how the light would travel in a line from the top, through the hole, and onto the wall. The line is diagonal, which means the top of the tree is now at the bottom of the wall, making the image upside down.

Inside a real camera, a mirror corrects the image.

And then, of course, you need something to capture the image, whether that means film or the new digital technology.

Bergeman will make the rounds through each of the fifth-grade classrooms this week, teaching about cameras as part of the science lesson.

On Friday, he will switch to more of a visual presentation with a talk titled “The Education of a Photographer: A Personal Journey” featuring photographs and stories from his personal photographic projects over the last 25 years “chronicling Oregon’s bygone days.”

The program begins at 7 p.m. at Crossroads, 2020 Auburn Ave. The public is welcome, and there is no charge.