PhotoTao Card #19 - Like a Child...

Card #19

Like a Child

Become like a child.  Watch the world through a 

child's eyes.  Experience the wonder of each new moment.

- Exercise -

The next time you go for a walk, make images from

 a child's perspective.  Hang your camera around your

neck (extend the strap if you must) and "shoot from

the hip".  Set the camera on auto and just click away.

Even turn the camera upside down! Sit on a bench with

the camera only a couple feet off the ground and make

images from a child's height.

   

A Little Boy in Galway - 2007

   Picasso wrote that it had taken him his whole life to learn how to draw like a child.  All children are artists he said.  The challenge was to stay an artist as you grow up.  Having been an art teacher for over 30 years I know the wisdom of those words.

   One way you can test out this theory is to give a camera to a small child and let them spend a day photographing anything they wish.  It might even be fun to take them on a walk...a photography stroll...and tell them to make photographs of things that catch their eye.  Then look at the results.

   Children are completely unconcerned by rules and parameters.  All that stuff about composition and framing means nothing to them.  They have a completely innocent view of the world.  "Out of the mouths of Babes..." can also apply to photography for out of the cameras of Babes comes inspiration for seeing the world with fresh eyes.