Lauren’s First Photo Shoot

Lauren has mentioned on multiple occasions that she’d like to be a photographer when she grows up. She’s also written about it two separate times as part of her school work. You might recall this one.

The other night, as I was putting her to bed, she asked me if she could go to photography school when she’s older. I told her she could as long as she agreed to teach me everything she learns!

Now, I don’t know if Lauren will end up being a photographer when she grows up or not. I don’t even know if she’ll grow up. That might sound fatalistic and morbid but that’s something we just don’t take for granted anymore. We don’t assume much about the future these days.

Thinking less about the future helps me focus more on each day. And that’s good.

Speaking of good focusing, I took Lauren on her first photo shoot this past weekend. There’s a creek not too far from our house and I thought it’d be the perfect setting to teach her a few things while enjoying time together in the great outdoors. Lana and I talked about it ahead of time and both agreed that Lauren should learn to shoot in manual mode (with auto-focus) right from the beginning.

Here’s our little “fotogofr” in action:

Her first assignment was to take a photo of the tall grass, attempting to get it in focus while blurring the background:

Although she passed with flying colors, I realized that I was trying to teach her too much in one session. So we decided to work on exposure only, specifically shutter speed. I set her aperture (poorly at that…too open!) and ISO. After a few instructions and test setups, I left her to figure out and set the right shutter speed for all of her shots for the rest of the day. Here are two of our favorites:

I promise you; Lauren took these photos…all by herself. Yes, these are two of her best ones. And, yes, Lana edited them to clean them up. But of all Lauren’s photos, only one missed the boat with respect to exposure. She had some focus issues. She had a few composition quirks. But her exposure was spot on and I’m so proud of her!