Focus on Photos ~ Sharing Photography with Kids

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Hello blog readers!  Kim here today to talk a little bit about photography and sharing a love of taking pictures with kids.  Now, I will be the first to admit that I am self-taught and still have lots to learn myself about the technical aspects of photography, so that is not what I’m going to be talking about today :)  But as early as I can remember, I have always loved photos.  I remember having cameras of my own growing up and how excited I was when we would get my pictures printed at the photo lab (because, yes, there was a time when you had to wait until they were developed to see them!!)  I still have photo albums of my pictures from elementary school and beyond.  Lots of things have changed with photography now, making it easier to learn by just giving things a try.  Digital photography means I can take as many pictures as I want and see how they turned out without having to make the investment in developing and printing them.  So I take pictures of everything all the time!!  And of course, my kids see me doing this and are interested in trying it too.  I admit, sometimes this can be frustrating, like when I want to be taking the picture of them but all they want to do is be behind the camera instead!  And after finally being able to invest in a DSLR, I’ve been a little hesitant to put it in the hands of a three-year-old, know what I mean??  But then, of course I want to take advantage of the interest my kids have in what I’m doing.  I’m not guaranteed they’ll stay interested forever!  So sometimes it’s hard to find the right balance.

Where am I going with all this?  I ran across an idea several months back that I knew I’d love to do with my older kids, and I’m going to share our fun with you today.  The idea was to have a photo scavenger hunt where you intentionally spent time letting the kids be behind the camera.  Love it!  Not only would they love that this time was all about them taking photos, but it would give them a fun way to find what the subject of the photos should be.

We had the perfect opportunity this month, as we were doing a big family birthday weekend and were looking for some simple fun things to do with everyone who was coming to visit.  (Thus I played our scavenger hunt up bigger than necessary.)  I started by creating a list of scavenger hunt items that I thought could be found in most outdoor places (thinking ahead that we could do this again later with the same list).  I was mindful to use things appropriate for my kids’ ages (turning 6 and 4).  Then I made a 4×6 inch card for each of the photographers that I laminated and put on a string so they could be worn around their neck (keeping little hands free for taking pictures!)  Here’s what my card and list looked like:

Credits: Recipe Card template (rotated) from the Muffin Man set, paper from Heartfelt, alpha from Boo, star extracted from Sandbox swirl stamp, and camera by Heather Roselli

We headed to one of our favorite parks, divided up into teams (boys against girls at the kids’ request), and started taking pictures!  Here are some of the photos that they took.

So what did I learn on our little adventure?  To start with, I could have made the list longer!  Although we weren’t making it a race to see who could find all the items first, competitiveness seems to run in our family and they got through these pretty quickly (about 15 minutes).  I encouraged them to find more things to photograph when they were done with the list.  It was also good that it wasn’t just me with the two of them because having a bit of adult help for each of them was good.  But beyond that, it worked really well!  They were both excited to see the pictures later on the computer and my daughter especially was excited to have my phone all to herself to take pictures (yes, we let her use the phone camera because it was simpler and what she really wanted to do).

Of course, you would expect that this adventure turned into a scrapbook layout!  I thought I’d share that with you too before I go ;)

Hope you’ve enjoyed a peek into our fun with a kids photo scavenger hunt!  And I hope you are all encouraged to find ways to share your interests with the kids in your life.  Be sure to stop by the blog tomorrow, as Kylie will be here with the September project scrap templates.  Bye bye!

KimInspiration, Photography, Uncategorized 8 Comments