Crystal Madrilejos

Quil started showing some interest in using a camera a little while back. (Sorry for the blurry iPhone photo above. He’s a photographer on the move!) Most of his baby photos were taken with this very camera he is using in that photo, but unfortunately, we don’t break it out that often now that I have an iPhone. But we’ve been bringing it out more so that he can explore with it. Neither Andrew and I are photographers, so we don’t have a ton of knowledge to pass on in that area, but right now he’s still really young and couldn’t grasp the concepts of shutter speed and aperture (I still struggle with this too). If he’s still interested in the future, it would be a fun thing to learn together. Right now, he’s just content to take photos of things that he sees. 

He’s almost 4 years old, very careful most of the time and only uses it when we are close by. The things he sees and takes photos of are interesting, from a unique perspective, and funny, like you would imagine the photos of an almost 4-year-old to be! Other than reminding him to be careful because the camera is delicate (and also, not ours, it belongs to my Dad) – we do our best to just let him do his thing and trust him with the responsibility of holding a camera on his own. He’s taken hundreds of photos and here are a few that I really liked:

For full disclosure, I did color correct these photos, as I would do to any photos that I take myself, mainly because I’m still not great at finding the best setting on camera for specific lighting situations. We have one setting on the camera that we stick to because it seems to work in most light. And anyway, I think the compositions are more interesting than anything, which was 100% his doing. I love seeing things from his angle and also the things he chooses to photograph, like a tiny string on the butt of Andrew’s sweatpants.

Do you let your kids take photographs? What are some interesting things they’ve seen?