Hunter Park Kindergarten

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Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Through the eyes of a child






























Most of our artists have concentrated on people and faces but here's some work from an artist interested in curves and lines.
Through the eyes of a child.
A couple of weeks ago and parent told me “I can’t believe you let my child use your camera.”

Shortly before I arrived here, less than six years ago but before these children were born, Hunter Park brought it’s first digital camera. It was worth $1200 and was one of the first digital cameras in an Early Childhood setting in HawkesBay. Since then through the telecom friends of the school program and the work of our committees, we have added four more digitals and a video camera to our fleet.

The 8mb card’s have been replaced by 2 gb cards and we’re starting to upload kindy trip photo’s onto the web (we’ll let you know when it’s ready to go, it’s still blocked as a potential spam site.)

As teachers we finally got brave enough to let children use the cameras freely in the last few years. I can certainly find examples as far back as our 2006 collection.

They showed us what great photographers children can be. Children can often capture amazingly candid photo’s of each other, and their perspective on the things they see is amazing. Too often we have trained ourselves not to see the details in the things around us, it’s just a puddle, it’s just a plank. Children look at things with fresh eyes and when we see through them we can notice for the first time in years the play of light and shape in a puddle, the lines formed by a plank, the shapes around us.

Children aren’t afraid to shove a camera right up close and take a photo of the part of an object that interests them. They don’t worry about standing back to get the whole thing in like we do.

Children don’t worry about holding the camera horizontal and flat, they’ll look down it at the ground, point it at the sky and experiment. If the effect is interesting they’ll run with it and explore it fully before they finish. They’ll even turn it on themselves, notice their mouth is in the shot, and try another with their mouth open to see what’s inside. That’s the great thing about the screens on the back, the children can get immediate feedback on the photo they have taken, and then take another one straight away.

So back to that statement “I can’t believe you let my child use your camera.” Can you see why we do now? I’ve selected just some of the photo’s the children have taken, over just a few days, formatted them and given them a title. I really should show the children how to do this themselves, but I’m still learning to be brave. I hope you enjoy them and the others we add and start to see life through the eyes of a child.
David 3.4.8

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