Yesterday the girls and I went for a walk, all with our cameras at the ready. We had a blast. Ginger was so excited to photograph everything along with a running commentary of her work! She just snapped away picture after picture. I don’t think the smile left her face the whole 2 hours we were out. We ended up downloading over 200 of her photos! The only instructions I gave her were how to turn the camera off and on and how to press the button to take the picture. I did remind her to keep her hand from the front of the lens a few times.

Molly, on the other hand,quietly waited for just the shot she wanted and then reviewed each one on the screen before taking another. She was much more particular, and critical. She ended up downloading only 40 some pictures.

I was so impressed not only with the photos they ended up with but mostly how different the approach was for each of them. For Ginger it was pure process. It was new and exciting and empowering to have free reign of the camera. Molly of course is more mature and she was using her own camera that she has used lots of times, but this was the first time she went out looking for pictures to take that were not posed. She wasn’t just snapping but really trying to take a good picture. Moving around and checking the light and noticing shadows and spaces and bits and pieces of things as opposed to the whole. In Gingers case this division process happened by chance , but became apparent when we looked at the photos-pictures of the tip of her shoe, our dog’s nose, rungs of the chair. They enjoyed critiqueing there work too. This was blurry, this is too dark, I really like the gooses neck in this one etc…

They both had a really great time and want to do this again soon. This was a wonderful opportunity to talk about how we each see things and what we each notice and what photos we liked best.
There photos were great too! So I thought a kids photo contest would be a great motivator for you all to let your kids use your cameras and share this great experience with them.

So here are the details:
Have YOUR KIDS take some pictures.
No photo shopping please!
To enter in the contest leave me a link to your childs photo in the comments below
Include your childs age-I will divide the contest in two 6 yrs old and under and 7yrs old and over
You can post as many photos as you want between now and Monday March 31st
Winners will be announced Tuesday April 1.
There will be prizes-not 1 million dollars but prizes!

To vote:
Check out the photos people link to, if there is one you like email me at pepperpa@box397.bluehost.com
Please vote for each photo only once per day.

I let each of my kids pick two of their favorite photos they took and here they are–Have fun!!
Molly’s Kid Pix


Ginger’s Kid Pix


She said, “I put the lens in my face and took a picture of me.” Her first self-portrait!

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