Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/12/03

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Subject: Re: [Leica] Request for Advice
From: Greg Locke <locke@straylight.ca>
Date: Thu, 03 Dec 1998 11:14:22 -0300

Hi Bill,

When my daughter was 3, I brought her home a toy camera from one of my
assignments.  She was a bright kid and knew what dad did for a living and
wanted to take pictures "like dad". 

It was a cheap $20 plastic thing but she used it and got the hang of
"filling the viewfinder".

A year later I gave her an old Olympus Stylus that was in the bottom of the
cabinet. 

This year, at 5, she is very effective with the Olympus and we are working
on the concept of focusing a Nikon F.... but this could take awhile.

I guess my advice, especially if you are not going to be around all the time
to help out, would be not to introduce concepts such as focus, depth of
field, etc.

Get him a durable point and shoot which the flash can be turned on or off
manually and get him to concentrate on composition and framing for awhile.
Once he gets that well defined and consistent, let him move on to the
technical aspects. 

The few times I have had to teach people photography, I emphasized the WHY
and WHAT they were photographing.  Know exactly what it is you are trying to
capture and exclude all that is not a part of the photo you want to make.

Once they KNOW what they want to photograph, then they can work on the
different  techniques to do it.

regards,
 
Greg Locke <locke@straylight.ca>                               
St. John's, Newfoundland.        
<http://www.straylight.ca/locke/>
- ----------------------------------
"I've finally figured out what's wrong with photography. 
It's a one-eyed man looking through a little 'ole. 
Now, how much reality can there be in that?" -- David Hockney