My Day Out

Today my teacher was on strike...Pay them more money!!!!! We went to see the Myer windows in the city. I did not take photos of the Christmas windows, but I did take photos of other things in the city. The D200 is a heavy camera. I need a better strap. We went to Starbucks, Hungry Jacks (also known as Burger King in the USA) and Lord of the Fries, it was a junk food day. My mom nearly never lets me have this kind of stuff.

More littleSIDEKLICK photos to come...we are working hard on all the details. Join the Facebook page to be the first to know the latest and how you can get involved! :)

littleSIDEKLICK begins

Finally I have my mom's old camera. We started taking pictures together today. I have always wanted to be behind the camera as well as being a model. 

This is my first picture on the D200. We will learn about editing later. I am using picmonkey.com to make the pictures fit on my blog. Right now editing is a bit too much and I just want to take pictures.

I was taking pictures of Kieran when Clover came along and hung her toy rabbit over the couch. I told Kieran to not smile. 

Later on I took pictures of Clover and her doll in the same spot as the first photo of Kieran. I learned that the light is great there in the morning and the afternoon. We are starting to learn about how to hold the camera and light. I could see when the photos were too dark or too bright from looking at the screen on the camera and then my mom would tell me what I could do to fix the photo. Most of that I did not understand, but she said we will go over all that later on and that this is about seeing what I see.

I loved being the boss.

There are more posts coming to show you what I am learning and to maybe help other kids learn with their moms. The world looks different to kids is what my mom and I are finding out.

My mom and I want you join our project. You can join the facebook page (I can't because I can't have a facebook yet) and tag (#littleSIDEKLICK) on Instagram. We are working on lots of things besides just the blog posts, but the best part is that I get to work on it with my mom.

I can't wait to see your photos and meet the other littleSIDEKLICKs!

- Gemma!

Gemma is shooting with a Nikon D200 and Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 lens. All shots here are manual settings, but auto white balance...one step at a time. - R

The New Look...

Gemma is getting back into it again and so we have tidied up her site to make it easier for her to update and for people to read.

Stay tuned for a few projects...the first that will be revealed is SideKlick. It is a project that you can participate in.

almost a year

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

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

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

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