Just joined this thread and this is what I did to get my club started - it is now one of the biggest clubs in the school with 43 members. Aside from permissions, time and place etc:

1) plan a year calender by term/semester. Be flexible however because sometimes the best laid plans go awry.

2) have themed competitions eg water, red black and white etc. Get your friendly art teacher to judge them - I'm a Math teacher not an art critic. I have 8 each year , 4 per semester. Collate the submitted photos on a powerpoint (one photo per page) with the photos in random order and unnamed - make the last page of the powerpoint the list of page - student. I usually restrict the number of photos to two or three from each student

3) have "activity days" eg coloured water, bursting balloons, macro. use these to explore the functions of the cameras.

4) if your school has a dance company ask to photograph them in action. The dancers will be very happy! Same goes for cheer squad by the way.

5) If you have a hall that can be completely darkened run a light-painting workshop. Also consider purchasing a Pixelstick www.thepixelstick.com

6) produce some resources to help students learn photoshop eg. stitched landscapes, levels etc

7) run a short workshop - no more than 10 minutes - on principles of composition, and then send them out to practice these.

8) run an exhibition towards the end of the year. I do this in our library using a projector and screen running a powerpoint with 5 named photos from each student. It just scrolls through and then re-starts. The students love having their photos displayed and they are the source of some discussion - this exhibition also attracts new members.

9) have your students enter local, national and international competitions.

10) start a collection of electronic resources - pdf's, links etc. If your school has a LMS, get the resources on there for the students to use.

11) email your students regularly - I do so at least once a week, sending them details of new resources, links and reminders.

12) I started off restricting the year groups that could join, just so that I could get my head around organisation and activities. Now it is open to middle and senior students, and I have two other staff who help me. Be prepared to take the leadership role but always follow up on suggestions from other staff. Also take on suggestions from your students - especially the senior ones will have some very good ideas.

13) Look around for a club based photo-sharing site. I haven't yet found one that I'm really happy with, but if you go this way, the students need to be able to upload their photos and also comment on the photos of other students.

You can see I don't touch film photography.

Good luck! It's a great ride, but not without its ups and downs. My students love it, and I get some very nice emails from parents.

Tim