Starting Young

What do you do when children want to handle valuable and fragile things? Forbid them and make the object all the more attractive? Let them handle it under supervision and and so familiarise themselves with it? Noah Picked up my number 1 camera. My heart sank as I watched him totter under the sheer weight of it, but I could see he was curious about this thing which he associated so strongly with me, and I would love him to have the gifts a camera can bring: the ability to see; the ability to make something beautiful in a fraction of a second. So I opted for the latter, and gave him his first photography lesson: Always put the strap around your neck. Never put your fingers on anything made of glass. Look through this bit. Press this one.

When I uploaded the results today I wish I hadn't left it set to continuous shooting. There were a lot of frames, but amongst the many mis-shots were several I would have been proud to have taken myself. True, the camera did a lot of the work for him, but it's interesting to see what he chose to point it at. All portraiture is about what's going on between the photographer and the subject. Sort of like found poems, these found pictures speak profoundly of him, and his relationships with those who love him.

Comments

Merv said…

Here's hoping Noah gets his own camera before a smartphone.

14 February 2017 at 16:16

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