kids with cameras...

Sarah got whisked away early this morning because one of her doula clients was in labor! What does that mean for me? I get to stay home with the kiddos! Having her on call for births makes life interesting. It presents some challenges, but it creates many fun surprises as well. For me, it meant that I get the morning at home with the kids! Sure, it is hard taking a day off of work at the last minute. And yes, with all of the snow recently, I am getting behind in some paperwork piled on my desk. But that will get done on Monday. Last night, I decided that it was time to officially retire my Nikon D70. I bought that camera about five years ago as my first DSLR. It was an amazing camera and it got me into professional photography. I built the beginnings of my portfolio with that camera and our clients loved the work we did with it. I pushed it to its limits and probably overused it! We've upgraded our gear since the beginning, but I still love the images produced from my D70. It must be retired, though, because of some technical issues and it's just not reliable. I can't resell it because it's corrupting memory cards and it's not really worth the money to repair. So instead of putting it in a box or on the shelf to collect dust, I gave it to our kids with an old 28-70 zoom lens from my film days!

I set it up for them so that it would take decently exposed shots throughout the house and showed them the basics. They're off experimenting as I type. Every now and then, they run in and ask what this button or that button does and they even figured out how to operate the flash. From the sound of it, I think they're taking pictures in the closet right now! I hope to post a few of their shots sometime soon (that is if the camera actually records them!). I love being able to give our kids more ways to explore their creativity. Here are a few shots of them learning the craft (maybe in a few years, we'll have some assistants!).

Kyla is trying her hand at some macro shots using her princesses in the doll house!