Child’s eye view

I have very fond memories of playing with camera’s from an early age, and I can only guess it was brought on by my father always playing with them, and video cameras. Dad has never been far from any sort of camera.

There was one camera I remember playing with that didn’t work, it was really old but I still used to play with it anyway. When I first started writing this post I couldn’t for the life of me remember the brand but after a couple of days of stretching our memory, between Mum, Dad and myself, and a bit of help from Google, we finally found it. A Kodak Brownie Starlet, they were made during the 1950’s and 60’s. None of us can remember where it came from, but mum thinks it still might be in the house so she’s going on a hunt.

There were many different camera’s around for me to try, and as I got older I used to try and take one where ever I went.

When my parent’s realised just how much I was enjoying photography I was given a second hand Kodak 110. I very rarely had it out of my sight. It eventually started to fall apart; I had put it together several times after dropping it but eventually it died.

I didn’t have to wait too long and I was given a brand new Pentax AF. That thing was one of the best presents I ever had; 35mm film, auto focus, and no more dodgy blurry photos, well so I thought. I soon realised I could take clearer photos if I used a tripod, so I commandeered dads metal, and heavy, tripod when ever I could.

While I was in College I did photography, I loved going out taking photos of different things. I mostly enjoyed landscapes but eventually enjoyed the challenge of getting out of my comfort zone to take photos of people. I had a great time going out taking photos, then going through the development process in the darkrooms at College. It wouldn’t have taken much to push dad to build a darkroom at home if I really wanted to.

After joining the navy, I was back in Tasmania on leave in 2002, dad went halves with me to buy a brand new, film, Canon EOS 3000N for my birthday. I absolutely loved it and was taking photos all the time. I have boxes and boxes of photos and negatives that I need to go through one day.

Photography never did turn into anything other than a general hobby for me, and any decent interest left me a couple of years after I got a digital camera. I still take lots of photos but most of the time it just feels too quick and lazy. Although I will admit digital camera’s have certainly saved me a lot of money. In just one night after wandering around Sydney in 2002, it cost my best mate and I $300 each to get our films developed.

I owned several different waterproof digital cameras for a while but I still used the 3000N most of the time, up until I bought a brand new digital Canon EOS 400D for Christmas 2006. I now had the freedom to take photos of whatever I wanted and not have to worry about wasting money. I was even able to use the same lenses and filters, at the time that was a huge bonus to me.

I now have folders and folders of saved photos on my computer and hard drives, and to sort all them out is a project for another day as well.

The main reason I wanted to write this post is because when my son was a toddler he quickly seemed to have a fascination with looking at pictures on our phones, and taking photos. He also seemed to be pretty good, which I don’t think is very difficult with today’s technology, but for a toddler I thought he was good.

My wife and I had discussions about getting him his own camera but decided there weren’t any cheap and easy enough for him to use, so we gave him an old iPhone to use. He loved it, and we loved seeing what weird and wonderful photos he would take.

As he got older and his interest in looking at, and taking photos only seemed to be getting bigger, one of his grandparents decided it was time he had his own camera. So for Christmas 2018 the camera of choice was the Canon IXUS. He could take photos and videos and he made sure he took plenty of both.

This little camera has been fantastic for him, he loves taking it most places we go and it has been a most cherished present. That was until I found out recently while he was out in the backyard he decided to throw it at a Magpie, rather than try and take a photo of it. He lost it in the bushes and couldn’t find it. I eventually found it, but as a consequence for his actions I didn’t let him know for several weeks before I finally gave it back to him.

For a period of time he was waking up really early but we thought we had convinced him to stay in his room until 6am. One morning we realised he had been using his camera so we checked the time stamps on some of the photos and found he had been waking up anywhere from 4:30am and playing with his camera. Some of the photos and videos, from a 5 year old, we discovered were quite funny. There was even a photo, with flash, of us asleep in bed and we had no idea he had taken it.

Since our son has had his own camera we discovered, that even from an early age he could express himself in photos and videos, he loves to entertain, whether that be other people or himself. On a couple of occasions, when I’m not away with work, I have enjoyed his company as we wander around taking photos of lots of different things.

It is amazing to try and figure out what he sees when he’s taking a photo, then to see what he actually photographed.

Because of the COVID-19 restrictions he wasn’t able to visit the hospital when his baby sister was born, but the day we drove up to bring her home he had his camera at the ready.

They say, as we get older we get wiser, I believe this to be true in part but as I got older I lost my sense of humour and imagination. Maybe by paying more attention to what my children do, I will learn to see things through their eyes; I might even get some humour and imagination back.