Visiting Don Campbell

On Friday 16 August, we went to Don Campbell's house. He is a photographer. My dad helped with transport. Miss Currie took four kids, and my dad took the other four. I took two locusts from our classroom. When we got there everyone went oh and ah because he had a big house. When we got inside, he showed us some fantastic slides of insects and fungus. By Renee Cullen

He also showed us pictures of fungus and toadstools on the slides. Some of them looked strange. If you touch some of the toadstools and then eat something, you can get poisoned and very sick. The dangerous ones are red with white spots. When they are small they are more orange than red. You need to tell your parents if you see them, so they can get rid of them. By Anthony Baird

We went outside to find a twig and some leaves. The twig was on special clips so it could be held up. Mr Campbell put some leaves for the background so the sun would shine through the leaves. It was in another clip at the back. Then we got the weta and the locust to climb on the twig. We encouraged it by poking it softly. By Anthony Tang

Don Campbell showed us his cameras. Most of his cameras were digital cameras. He changes the lens for different types of photos. He showed us how to change the lens. You just screw the different lens on and off. He used a tripod to keep the camera still and focussed. A tripod is a stand for a camera and it has three legs. By Rebecca Hardie

When we went to Mr Campbell's, he took some photos with his digital cameras, then connected them to his laptop computer. We saw some big close-up photos of the locust and weta. The locust was awesome. The weta was humungous, and you could see its six long legs and its big eyes. When we saw the locust on the computer it was on a stick with a leaf for a background. After he did that he cropped the photos and emailed them to us. By Vincent Smith

You have to be careful if you want an insect to come on your hand. You do not grab it, you just gently let it walk on to your hand. If the insect walks in the wrong direction you just rotate your hands so it doesn't drop off and hurt itself. If you want it to get off your hand you put it gently on to the twig or container. If you want to move it up a bit more, you just gently push it up, so you don't hurt it. By Lance Tawa

Don Campbell taught us how to calm an insect down so you can take a photo of it. He said that we should put the insect in the fridge for ten minutes only. The insect will get cold and stay still, so it doesn't lose energy. The flash of a camera will also make them stay still. By Rhiannon Nakhle

We went into Mr Campbell's garden and the first insect we saw was a monarch butterfly. Rebecca was about to take a picture, but it flew away. I found a slater, then everyone came running, but the slater crawled away. Next I found a little spider. Everybody came to see but it crawled away. Soon we went to look near the wood pile, but there was nothing there. By Kharandeep Bhullar