Populus Es Bardus: Creative Thursday

Lizzy's 'Perspective'

I switched out my photography gear several months ago and gave Emily my old dslr. I was feeling kind of bad that I had not gone out on a photo safari with her. Well, this Saturday was unusually warm, so in the afternoon the girls and I went to the lake and then to the beach on a photo safari. When we got to the lake, I showed Emily how her camera worked and different shooting techniques. I was her age when I got my first Canon SLR, I saved for half a year so that I could afford it. It was magical! I could capture memories on paper, now in pixels she had the same opportunity. Lizzy was jealous when Emily got my old dslr, but Lizzy is still too young to get one of her own, so I bought her a simple digital camera and she usually uses one of the various point and shoots we have around the house.

We got done at the lake quickly and the kids wanted to go to the beach. I showed Emily the impact of shadow and motion on the lens and we took several hundred shots each before the light ran away to the west. When we got home, we downloaded our photographic treasures and viewed them.

Out of all the pictures, one of Lizzy's from the lake, stuck out. It was a shot of a hole in a fallen tree. I laughed to myself as I realized the wonder of a child's perspective. Out of all the pictures taken that day, Lizzy captured the true treasure on the little point and shoot camera, that's quality is mediocre at best. Emily and I had some nice shots, but I was so deep in the technical for Emily, I overlooked that which made me fall in love with photography, the beauty that no one else would see, because they didn't look at something just a little differently.

Sunday came and the girls wanted to go back to the beach for “Shell Collecting”, as I call beach photography. We drove to Sandy Hook State Park. If there is photgraphers' heaven, Sandy Hook is definitely part of it. Two lighthouses, the beach, bay, wildlife preserve, bird migration path, old military fort and the New York Skyline are just some of the sites. We weren't looking for those though, Sunday it was time to take Lizzy's lead and I gave the kids the goal of looking at things from a different perspective.

On the way, I explained to the girls, “Anyone can take pictures of a skyline, birds or lighthouses a photographer makes what he takes his own.”. When we arrived, we were ill prepared for the weather that we were about to face. The mercury dropped the night before and though it is usually colder on the hook than the other beaches, Sunday was especially brutal. I asked the kids if they wanted to leave, but they were too excited and trekked to the beach between the dunes and sand grass.

After an hour and a half, my body was going numb, a good indication that the kids were probably feeling the same. We started our walk back, this time inland from the water. We had been shooting from different angles but I still felt there would not be enough impact in the pictures. It was time to reach into my youth; time to remember the young man with an slr for the first time; time to remember why I want so much to leave the warmth or the cool of the indoors to struggle through unkempt trails and wet lands and anywhere else with the weight of a camera on my shoulder.

I watched Lizzy and thought how things must look from her height and I knew what I had to do, I laid flat on the beach and looked at a spent nautilus shell. From above it was nothing special, but looking at it from the level of the beach, it was amazing, a beauty that most would never see. The kids watching me thought I was crazy but after coaxing them to try the same thing, by offering the warm sand, they tried it.

When we got home, Emily made hot cocoa and we sat together while we went through the pictures.. We were pretty happy with the results and as always, I was proud of my girls. We had a great day, “Collecting Shells”