Imaginary Cameras and Framing

This excercise, is something that we were made to do as students in a lab at Srishti. I thought, it would be perfect to apply this to kids, who have never used a camera, because this way it gets them thinking about what they want to click, without actually clicking it and going nuts on the camera!

Its pretty simple, I gave them paper - they could chose the color, and told them to make windows in the paper of any size, shape or kind. I asked them what shape the frame is of a photograph, they all knew it was a rectangle or square and so, I asked them, to make any frames they'd like they're camera to have instead of a square or rectangle.  To make it more exciting, I told them to think of what exactly they would like to use the frame to click a picture of. It could be many things, but why this shape and this picture?

Shivani and I, then walked around with them, telling them to show us what they would like to click mental images of and made them use the window to frame that image.

The aim for this class was to get them excited about the workshops and to make them think a little out of the box. I think we got through to them, because, they were wondering if they could use the frames to click more pictures with their minds. I am not going to be giving the kids any real homework as such, I want this class to be like a stress buster for them and make them want to click photos out of pleasure, not force.