:: judy devine ::

almost a year

2011-04-23T16:46:00.000+10:00

I asked Gemma if she wanted to update her blog as it had been a year since she did anything with it. We had fun this morning picking out the new design and downloading images from her camera.
Since last year she has lost 3 teeth, replaced 2 of those with grown up versions, moved into 1st grade and gotten even better at reading, writing and riding her bike. She plays tennis now (better than I ever will) and will be doing netball and starting circus school to master hula-hooping. Gemma has already had her first sleepover(s) at a friend's house and has her own metro card. She has made great friends here, but still misses her Natalie and Indra back home.

Gemma had this to say about her blog:

"It has a long time since I put photos on the blog, but I have been taking lots of photos."

See.

these birds were in the neighbor's almond tree

they left their feathers all over our deck. i collected one.

my friend and our moms went out to sushi. they let us go to the bathroom by ourselves.

i took this picture before we left my house and then we did a video in the sushi bathroom.

If you are a twin, you are not getting into Gemma's room "inless" she says so. And because the twins can't read she did the international symbol of "NO" drawing them in a circle with the line through it. She made sure to sign it with a love heart and an X for a kiss. No hard feelings.

Who knows when Gemma will get more stuff back on here, but she really wants to write about her new dream to be a circus performer...I am sure she will be back to share her favorite videos with this blog soon.

A Lesson In Manners - Observations From A Five Year Old Photographer

2010-05-11T15:11:00.003+10:00

gemma and i walk to and from school every day and she made a great observation which she thought she would share through photos... no one asks nicely to no get junk mail.

no please.

no thank you.

and some are down right grumpy about it. this one warns that the sender will incur the cost of returning all the advertising and promotional materials.

as we walked along, gemma wondered out loud if the post man ever just gave them junk mail anyway because they did not have any manners. she reckoned that she would to teach them a lesson.

Dusting Off Her Interest and Her Point and Shoot Camera

2010-05-01T22:52:00.000+10:00

Gemma came to me and said that she wanted to take pictures again, so we are keeping the battery charged and she is responsible for her own camera. We have passed on the old family point and shoot with a beautiful kid length (handmade for her by a wonderful friend) camera strap and a small case. As her mom, I get asked a lot for camera recommendations for kids. My answer for now is "nothing fancy" when they are this young. Gemma enjoys capturing what she sees and while I am teaching her about exposure and photography theory, she is really only interested in pointing and shooting. She is five. We did move into the "scene" modes, so she is picking the correct settings for the situation. She is learning in the process, what the camera is doing and why those choices are appropriate for action or portraits or macro etc...

I think the first lesson for kids who want to take pictures is how to care for a camera and then how to hold it while shooting. We work on making sure the lens is clean, finger placement, support and protection of the camera. The kid sized camera strap keeps the camera at a good position on her little body...if the strap is too long, the camera will swing around and knock into things.

Life around here lately in pictures according to Gemma.

You need to feed unicorns glitter.

Bears like the sun.

Dad likes bikes. (that is mom's new bike, dad's bikes are fancier)

The twins do not like their bike ride.

Our family portrait before the bike ride. (she had to use a substitute helmet for alec's since he had his and she would not do the photo without "all of us there")

The leaves are all brown now...it happened in just a few days.

And finally, what she named her best shot. She was so proud of this one as she took it through the small hole in the fence where the gate handle is. We have olive trees (lots of olive trees) surrounding the area where we will be starting our "urban farm" / square foot garden.

What I found most interesting about looking at her shots now as opposed to the ones that were on the card from ages ago...there are not as many people shots. In fact, this time around, there were none. There are some people shots since this batch, but there is a real effort on her part to putting together scenes and capturing the "things" around her.

Her Rainbow Period

2010-04-20T22:06:00.000+10:00

Also from a while ago...Gemma was clearly taken with rainbows. She was finding them everywhere.

My favorite is the first one as I am pretty sure that it is the view from her *uh-hem* potty.

-SE

Found On The Card

2010-04-20T17:07:00.000+10:00

It has been a while since Gemma last picked up her camera...there were shots on there from a year ago. Here are a few of them.

Two from the archives

2010-04-19T14:21:00.001+10:00

taken with the then family point and shoot camera while having her diaper changed on a transpacific flight when she was one and half years old.
June 11, 2006

taken with the now her very own point and shoot camera the day before the twins came home from the hospital when she was three and a half years old.
July 11, 2008

Just looking through Gemma's flickr sets and these two really stood out to me. The first shot has no post processing, but the second one was a Lightroom preset. Gemma is old enough now to edit the photos in Lightroom on her own, but at the time she would sit on my lap at the computer and pick a preset for each of her shots. That way she could still determine how she wanted the image to look. I am going to set her up with Photoshop Elements on her laptop and see if she can work with it...otherwise it will be back to Lightroom for her.

welcome to the photo blog by Gemma...

2010-04-19T11:15:00.004+10:00

all photos from here on out will be by gemma...this one is by gemma's mom.

Does your child like taking photos? There are some books on Amazon that you may find useful:
The Kids' Guide to Digital Photography: How to Shoot, Save, Play with & Print Your Digital Photos.
Cameras for Kids: Fun and Inexpensive Projects for the Little Photographer (Volume 1)
Photography Guide For Kids