Kids w/ cameras - a revelation.

I took my son to the Carlsbad Flower fields a few weeks ago to take some photos. I brought along my Pentax DL Digital SLR as well as my Powershot A70 point n shoot camera for my son to use. The weather was overcast, but this was my day off and rain was the forecast for the upcoming weekend. We decided to pay the entance fee and press on with our little photo excursion.

As luck would have it, I forgot to put the SD card back in my Pentax and I had no 'film' to shoot with. All we had was the point n shoot to share between us. Since this was supposed to be a fun outing for my son, I sucked it up and let him take (almost!) all of the photos for the day using the point n shoot.

Wow. I'm actually glad everything turned out this way. Until now, I never fully realized what fascinates the mind of a first-grade lad. He likes legos, trucks, and machines, but I gained a new appreciation for how his mind works after this 'photo essay'. Some of the pictures he took actually had flowwers in them!! Below is a 40,000 word sampling of our outing. Judge for yourself...

Trucks passing by the Costco across the street.

Sprinkler valve manifold.

Mud-caked tailpipe on a pickup truck.

My son went into the porta potty and I offered to 'hold the camera' for him. I consider this the best shot I made during the two minutes I had the camera, but radically different from anything that interested my son.


This is all made possible by digital camera technology! Years ago my first camera was a kodak 110 camera with cartridge film. The learning curve was steep- I did not learn about exposure and (disposable cube) flash use until weeks after burning a few rolls. Today my son can fire away on the digital cam and we just delete the blurred or crummy pix. I keep the remainder of my son's pics in a separate folder on my computer and print out his favorite fotos on snapfish.

For parents, I highly recommend doing this with your kids for three reasons: (1) It's a great way to understand how your child sees the world. (2) You can graphically catalog the development of his mind through his photos. (3) MOST IMPORTANT - I made the startling discovery that a small camera in the hands of an active child acts as a boat anchor- I can easily keep pace with him and do not have to sprint to chase him around!!