When I was a kid, my parents had a Polaroid Instant camera. We actually also has a 16mm film camera, which I loved too. I was really INTO those things, addicted even. I still am. The magic of the instant camera, its sound, smell, when the image began to appear… pure magic!
My youngest daughter, now 4 1/2 loves cameras too. When she was 3 I got her a kids instant camera which she adored. My wife and I have pictures of ourselves taken by her on our fridge door at home, we treasure them.
We are often too lazy to print our digital family photos, aren’t we? Personally, I have them backed up on 4 hard drives and 2 different cloud storage solutions - so I guess they are a personal memory archive, and I’d argue that the photos we take of our families are the most important photos we will ever take…
A day or so ago, I took my daughter with me on a photo expedition into the desert: our first as father and daughter. Of course, we took dad’s ‘big camera’, but we also took her instant camera and a spade to ‘dig for treasure’ (a great analogy for finding a great image too!).
My photos on that day were terrible. The clouds had gone, there were a lot of 4x4’s making tyre tracks in the pristine dunes, but my daughters images were super! She was (and I), very proud of her efforts. We even went for a horse ride on the way home to celebrate!
I can’t really put into words how proud I was of her on that day. An adventure with dad, an escape from the city, a first photo essay. If you have kids, buy them a cheap instant camera - they may surprise you, and at the same time, you have a pre-printed memory, right there in your hand, just as your kid saw it!
If you’re interested, here is the one she uses (we are not sponsored for this): Fujifilm Instax kids Camera
