Digital cameras, with their ability to take as many pictures as there is memory, cost-free, is a great creative device for older children and teens. I set my kids loose one day with my camera, and they came up with some pretty funny results. Better yet, they spent the whole afternoon having fun together.
Here are a few pictures that my daughter, Brennyn, took of my son and a giant Barbie. Well, actually, it’s a regular size Barbie, but you knew that, right?
She held the Barbie in front of the camera, and then instructed Andrew where to stand so it looked like Andrew and the Barbie were the same size. Brennyn said she didn’t have to mess with the focus or anything, just snapped the pictures on auto focus, but you may have to do some fine tuning (again, the beauty of digital cameras–no waste!)
High Five!
King Kong’s got nothing on Andrew
Barbie’s revenge
Now it was Andrew’s turn to take some pictures of Brennyn. She printed out a picture of her favorite singer (Gerard from My Chemical Romance — it’s not a zombie, I swear) on the computer on regular-size paper and cut him out. Then Andrew did the same as Brennyn did with the Barbie–the cut-out Gerard is close to the camera and Brennyn is further back.
Can we keep him?
They also use the digital camera to take interesting pictures for their friends and to post on their internet sites. And unless they are doing a shot of themselves in the mirror, they need each other. My daughter is three years older than my son, and so anything that they can find to do together instead of just annoying each other makes me happy.
For a ton of clever ideas for playing with your camera, there’s a good book from Klutz Press called “Tricky Pix” that comes with an actual, disposable camera, but the ideas work with a digital camera as well. (Full disclosure I used to work for Klutz Press but have no affiliation with this book – I’m just a fan of it.)