Give your child your camera

Lesley_Burdett

Over half term, I was in the Isle of Wight with my children Oliver aged 9 and Sebastian aged 6. We had a lovely time and the sun shone for us!

I decided to pack one of my photo booth DSLRs, a Canon 40D with a fixed 50mm lens, with the sole purpose of giving it to my children to use during the holiday. After strict ‘put this around your neck every time you want to use’ instructions (thanks for the neck strap Dad!), I put it on full auto and let them run riot. The results were pretty amazing and have made me smile big time.

So if you can muster that little bit of trust needed, then I highly recommend allowing your children loose with a camera. Encourage them to snap away and give them guidance on taking photos of strangers too. Make sure they are involved in the whole process i.e. back end upload, editing and PRINTING too. Printing images is something I am totally passionate about and will help reinforce to your children, how important photography is in recording our short lives. The iPhone generation is truly upon us and the throwaway culture being instilled into our children is a battle we have almost lost in my eyes. So if you don’t have a home printer that can cope with printing to photo paper, there are many outlets which allow you to keep those treasured memories.

There are kid’s cameras available in the market but based on personal experience, I’m going to look out for a cheap DSLR (probably a Canon 20D) and without forcing photography on the kids, will try to keep up this practice with the hope they will one day ask “What are the other symbols on this button Mummy?”.

Here’s some of my favourites: