Children and thier Photographs

I found the article about the children’s’ photographs to be very interesting. I actually went to the website that was provided in the article to look at some of the photographs, and I was very impressed with everything I saw. I enjoyed looking at the photographs that the children took, and even found it more enjoyable to read the answers that they gave which accompanied their photographs. I was surprised to read that children were using words like “memento” in their answers when they were only 7 years old. I’m sure the interviewers wouldn’t have changed their words but I was just surprised by the rich vocabulary that I read throughout many of quotes that I read below the photographs. I wanted to share a couple of examples that I stood out for me when I was glancing through the photographs.

A seven-year-old girl named Claire was answering questions about a photograph of a dog that she had taken: Why do you like this photo? Claire: I like it because I love that dog, and then because I really like it because we’ve already lost one and I wouldn’t like to lose it again, I wouldn’t like to lose it. I: What will you do with this photo? Claire: I’ll keep it because it’s a souvenir for me and then each time I see it my heart beats really fast.

Another example that interested me was this one:

When a seven year old girl was asked about the picture she had taken of a house, If you could change or improve this photo, how would you do it?... Maud: ...I’d like to change the colour of the shutters.

It would be interesting to further ask her how she would change the colour, I wonder if she knows that she can change the colour through a Photoshop program, or if she would say that she would need to paint them with a brush. I thought that it was interesting to ask the children about why they took the photographs, I myself never really thought about why I take them, but now that I have put a bit of thought into my answer I have realized that most of the photographs I take are for amusement. It’s fun to take photographs, and it extends that amount of enjoyment you instantly get from partaking in an activity. With the photographs you can remember the fun times you had, or the beautiful things that you saw. I personally also enjoy taking photographs for artistic purposes and find myself trying to be creative with what I capture.

I really liked how the children were asked to use the camera in any way they wished rather than being instructed to ‘take photographs’. I also never realized that photographs varied depending on the age of the photographer. It was interesting to read about the youngest children in the study and how they were predominantly accompanied by members of their families at the time of taking the photographs. It would be interesting to further extend this study to see if there are differences between young adults, middle-aged adults, and the elderly. The study could have also examined the differences in the photos between each country. Perhaps there are differences in what the children took photographs relative to the cultural norms of their country? I also think that the methods in this study could be used by parents to ask their children about the photographs they take so that they could write what their children on the back of the photos. This would make for a very interesting album, and great memoir for the children to look back upon when they get older.

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