How to be Pleasant: Life is Good on Pleasant Avenue: Photography with kids

Life is Good: photographers are great artists, too!

It's "Great Artists Week" at Casa de How to be Pleasant! A while back, a friend of mine suggested that we give our big kids a couple of disposable cameras and see what...wait for it...develops! I love that idea, but we have yet to do it. However, I got a new camera before our trip to Mount Rushmore in June (more about that later!) and so I let the big kid have my camera (love love love the Cybershot. I have owned four of them!) for parts of our trip and he had so much fun taking pics. (And the photos are pretty cute!)

Stuff like this...

And this...

Self portraits...

And food shots. If food was on a plate, he took a picture of it...

I have to admit, I love the angle of the cracker shot!

So this week, while we are discussing great artists, I've made sure to point out that photographers are artists, too. Artists don't just paint and draw. I love photos (besides what is in our brain, they are all that we have left of a moment in time) and love taking pictures. However I have absolutely no training as far as lighting or using my camera settings properly goes. If I could go back in time, I would take a photography class pre-kids.

We've been looking at photographs and talking about what we like about them. The subject, the color (or lack of it), whether it is a close-up or wide shot, etc. This has all led to some very interesting conversations. And at the end of the day, we've learned about great artists, but more importantly, we've laughed and wondered, we've bonded, we've climbed inside each other's brains, we've simply spent good, quality time together.

After viewing photographs by Ansel Adams, Jay Maisel and Michael Kahn (I had the joy of seeing an exhibit of his originals in a small gallery in Nantucket several years ago. They are breathtaking up close!), we set out on a "photography adventure".

I handed the camera over to the big kid and asked him to take a picture for each letter of the alphabet while we took a walk in the city. Some letters were more difficult than others. It was fun to see how his creativity took hold in some instances. And I loved seeing the results, too. He was very specific about angles, closeness to the subject, and more.

A for antenna...