Here’s the small class I’ve had at Stockport Academy. The class is called ‘Enrichment’, and the aim is to introduce the pupils to new ideas outside of what the school can provide. I’ve been there the last three weeks, for just an hour a week, explaining the basics of putting together a news picture. They’ve taken the pictures on whatever they’ve had around – principally mobile phones and compact digitals. For that very reason I’m not able to showcase everything that was taken.

The first assignment was to take a picture illustrating a story about a burglary, where something of sentimental value was stolen. Our first story is that our man’s dog been nicked – look at that expression, and the empty lead in his hand! – and the next was Mum’s raided jewellery box, using a mirror as an adventurous framing device.

The next assignment was a happy news story – so an experiment in creating a different tone. Again the story details were up to them, but the tone needed to be ‘happy’ since local news stories do usually come in only two flavours. Our first is a picture of Rowan’s guitar – Rowan does like guitar music, though I did explain that news pictures really need a person in them…

…. then we move onto the missing dog’s glorious homecoming…

… and in keeping with the missing animals theme, though Mum has lost her jewellery, look who found his way home.

I know a few local newspapers that would switch their staff photographers for these in a heartbeat, though of course, the company Ford couldn’t leave the drive…