My GPS Camera Phone

My other life over at Dad Blogs has started a new weekly meme called Fatherhood Friday. I thought about how to do that meme over here and determined that I can post a photo of something fatherhood-ish, taken with a camera phone (of course).

This week’s image is a photo of one of the family favorite stuffed animals. He’s got a British accent, has a cartoon and a book (I think) and is geared toward the preschool crowd. This guy is so popular that we might have to share time with him when the kids grow up and move on. I’ll stop there and see if you can figure it out.

My children went through Montessori school, which is pretty much a free-form environment for kids to play with lots of educational materials in the form of books, music, art and other fun kid stuff. We were lucky enough to find and be admitted to Flowers Montessori (the best school in the city, in my opinion), which led to our kids getting a big head-start on the basics.

One afternoon while picking up my daughter, I noticed a lot of interesting black-and-white photos hanging on the walls. They looked so artfully done that I started to wonder about the photographer. Then I realized a common trait shared by all of them: the perspective was about thigh-high. Kids, I thought. What a brilliant idea.

Since that day, I have always let both girls take photos from the day they could hold a camera enough for me to trust them. There’s something about a photo taken by a child that evokes a feeling that no adult can capture. Kids take photos of things that the average person wouldn’t think of shooting. A television while it’s on, a toilet, a ceiling fan or the family pet while they’re eating. They bring a real-life quality to photos that professionals work to perfect over their entire careers.

Often, other parents will see my girls running around with my (shiny, expensive, breakable, fragile, non-kid-proof, please-don’t-drop-it) digital camera or camera phone and look at me like I’ve got three heads. However, they also have this look of amazement, at which point I tell them to give it a try with their little hellions kids. “You’ll be surprised,” I tell them.

“Yes,” they reply, with a forced grin. “You’re crazy.” (OK, they think that last part, I’m sure of it.)

The point of this is that kids revel in the light of an adult task, like handling a camera. Teach them to use the wrist/neck strap from the start and a few basic things, then let them go wandering. When they return, sit back and flip through the photos with them. It’s will probably be the most intense conversation you’ve gotten from your child in ages. Doing something like this will also provide your child with an abundance of creative, right-brain activity, which is unfortunately all but phased out of most public schools today.

I’ve decided to run with this on My GPS Camera Phone as a new post theme. There’s two good reasons: 1) read the above and 2) there’s no shortage of photos to post. Additionally, I ask everyone interested to submit your kid’s camera phone photos (or photos from any kid), and I’ll consider posting them.

Of course, you adults can submit camera phone photos as well. E-mail them to photos(at)mygpscameraphone.com and make sure to include the backstory, which will also be posted. You get a photo credit and a linkback to your site. How can you argue with that? Besides, if you don’t submit, I’ll just keep posting my kids’ pictures.

Just enjoying a lazy Saturday of coffee, clear skies and kids on the swings.

And file recovery.

In retrospect of how the Powerbook has been behaving, it seems that the hard drive is failing. I’m slowly recovering files and hope to get it all by this evening, but it’s an unpredictable process. On the bright side, it’s a reason to go computer shopping. I’d normally replace the hard drive, but I’m not about to attempt it on a Powerbook. My geek skills are good, but not that good.

In other news, I’m now on Twitter. I think my first tweet says it all:

“The assimilation is complete – I joined Twitter.”

So if you are inclined to see what I’m up to, follow me, peteej.