Volunteer blends photography, science to teach Boys & Girls Club kids

Of course, these young photography students don’t know much about old-school devices such as “cameras.” Ask if any of them own their own cameras, and you get uncomprehending blinks … until Zamorah Frazier, 7, catches on and says she likes taking pictures with her tablet.

So Klein said he enjoys familiarizing these kids with the underlying principals of photography. He’s a retired commercial photographer who honed his skills working for the Air Force and at Cape Canaveral in Florida — where he ran banks of movie cameras that tracked rocket launches — as well as for a top Chicago photo studio. Along the way, he started developing some innovative lighting effects that draw the eye, and exploring the luminous possibilities have been his passion ever since. He has had shows and published books full of his amazing abstractions. He is also an enthusiastic teacher of alternative photographic techniques at Gallery 360 and, this fall, at the Boys & Girls Clubs’ OK Clubhouse in the Bagley Downs area.

The spry, cheery Klein, stretching credulity when he says he’s 83 years old, shows up Thursday afternoons with some “high-tech” equipment: a cardboard box, a dark curtain, a flashlight bulb dangling from a cord and a digital camera on a tripod.

One by one, the kids step up and get some coaching about giving the light bulb inside the box a really good swing.

” ‘You’re working with science,’ I always tell them, because different things are going to affect the swing,” Klein said.

At first, the strength and direction of the swing are the major factors, but after just a few seconds, “gravity and the rotational speed of our planet” become the leading partners in the dance, he said. Demonstrating how the visible motion of a bulb in a box is affected by the cosmic forces that power the universe is pretty darned cool, Klein said. The bulb starts swinging. Klein opens the shutter on his camera for 30 seconds as the swing tapers. The shutter closes again. Thirty more suspenseful seconds while the image composes itself on Klein’s tiny screen — and then those whoops and whoas at the glowing cats-cradles that appear.

“No two are ever the same,” Klein said.

After the kids have the basic idea, Klein does a second round with color filters for kids who are deeply in love with some special hue — such as pink, a favorite of 7-year-old Zamorah.

“I like it. I’m famous! It looks like a butterfly. I want to take it home,” she told Klein — who processes the photos and can print them out at the OK Clubhouse or download them onto kids’ personal devices such as Zamorah’s tablet.

“Mine looks like a banana,” said 6-year-old Malaya Garza, with a little uncertainty.

“Mine looks like a very deep-orange potato chip,” said 8-year-old Mathilde Ludiye Gay.

“Can I see my banana again?” Malaya asked.