Starting Young

They say to achieve greatness, one must start young. It has always been my dream to be a great photographer, working for the prestigious National Geographic magazine. So since my dream will never realize, I am planting the seed in the next generation, hopefully Ian will one day fulfill my unrealized dream...I think this is pretty common among all parents, having been a "victim" myself from my mom "forcing" me to learn piano...oh well.

So the first step towards greatness is a very simple one...start with the "idiot proof" point & shoot...Ian seemed to got a hang of the p&s pretty fast. Hmm...good job! You know what they say, it runs in the family, heh heh heh, that's my boy!

Ian figuring out the P&S

Looking through the digital screen

Ian was watching me using SLR so he tried to imitate me even on a P&S with digital screen and no view finder :)

Click!

Ok, the next step towards greatness, let's try my SLR...nope my Contax body is too expensive for Ian to experiment with...so let's start with my cheap and reliable Yashica FX SLR with a Carl Zeiss 50mm lens. I told Ian this will be his camera when he grows up. His face just brightened up upon hearing that and now he calls this his camera.

Ian looking through the view finder...

Say cheese!

The third step towards greatness is to expose Ian to even more challenging light recording devices. This time we will use the good old Fujica range finder my dad gave me. Ian is very interested in older stuffs, this includes older cars, toys and cameras. By the way, Ian also prefers to play with older girls instead of younger, and this got me worried a bit :p

Ian was pretty interested in the old range finder when I told him that this was grandpa's.

Figuring out how to hold the camera...

Oops, wrong side up!

Ok, now papa said something about turning back the film lever...

I am getting it...

Is it this way?

Finally, time to take pictures!

Ready, get set...

Ki-chuck!

Now the final steps towards achieving greatness is to learn a really really difficult camera, and for this task I am letting Ian play around with my beloved Mamiya TLR. With full manual focus and full metering function, even I have yet to master this beast.

Ian learning to open up the TLR view finder

There you go!

Looking through the TLR screen...what an upside down world!

Ian the little apprentice of photography

But of course all of the above were just my own wishful thinking. Ian was just playing around with my cameras without really learning anything...However it is my hope that by exposing Ian to the photography world at a young age, he will be at least a better photographer than his not-so-professional papa!