This school year we wanted to do something fun that we could all learn together as our extra-curricular activity. Seeing as how my best friend is my Canon 40D, it was a no-brainer. Thankfully, both of my children are interested in pictures and have their mama’s love of beautiful things. My 10 year old daughter has been begging me to do a photo class with her for a long time, but my son really has talent, too. He said to me the other day when we started passing the camera around for the first time, “You know, mama, I could take pictures as good as Morgan if you just teach me.”
Well, by golly, we’re going to learn this year. Not just them, but me, too!
And here’s the loose Photography with Kids 101 plan:
TAKE PICTURES and lots of ‘em
Read Scott Kelby’s “The Adobe Photoshop CS4 Book for Photographers”
Learn how to use Photoshop and Lightroom to edit our photos
Look at other photographer’s work
Attend photo walks/shoots
Work on our co-op year book team
Keep a portfolio of finished work we are proud of
Blog some photos on our blogs (the kids are using their blogs this year to do school projects once a week)
Easy as pie.
Want to see our first two finished and edited photos from the first photo shoot of the year? We were out documenting how dry it has been in our area because of the drought. We also had a few things we wanted to photograph (an old windmill and a chimney without a house). Funny that the favorite pictures from both kids ended up NOT being something we PLANNED to shoot.
Take a look!
Here’s my son’s (age 12) two shots that we edited in Picnik (because we haven’t learned anything yet about Photoshop – we’re only in the intro of Kelby’s book – and we already love him!):
Here’s my daughter’s two shots that we edited in Picnik (loved how she chose to go really gritty with the editing on the ‘Don’t Mess with Texas’ road sign!):
The kids are amazing. They really have talent. I can’t wait to see what all they come up with in their portfolios this year. I look forward to a lot of fun – with me teaching and learning along side them – and all of us enjoying something that we love to do. It’s great that we can call it school! It just feels like play to me.
Love in Him,
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
All great shots! Have fun learning together….we are.
Great idea!! I have been looking for something like this!
Those are fabulous pictures your children took! What a fun year that will be for them!
I’m actually teaching a Photo 101 class to a group of homeschoolers this year. I’m thinking it’s going to be a lot of fun!
I love this idea! My kids always like taking photos with my camera. They’d probably enjoy learning more about photography too. You know the next step is digital scrapbooking–right?
I’ve posted an article on my blog about using digital scrapbooking as an educational tool. Your kids did a great job with these photos!
I love taking photos, as you probably already know from my blog.
Those are some good ones though.