Covid 19, Photography, Me and My 6 Year Old…

We’re living through strange times.

I’m at home, isolating myself and home schooling my daughter, Sophie.  Like many others, my business has been halted overnight.  This is the new ‘normal’ for a while at least.

So what are we doing during Covid 19?  This week we’re ‘at school’ but I’m still a photographer; it’s what I do and what I am.  I need to use it.  

So I’ve created a fun way for all parents out there to do a fun photo challenge with their kids whilst we’re cooped up at home.  You can use any camera or Smart Phone, just use it as a chance to show them how to work it and have some fun.

Your creative challenge is:

1. Ask your child what their favourite teddy/dolly/action man is.  
2. Create a series of activities for your figures to do and photograph each one of them.  
3. Download the photos to your computer and select your favourite one from each activity and print them off.  
4. Finally, stick them into a hand made photo album/book.  You can simply staple some paper together and add a title to the front and stick them in. 

Once you suggest this idea their imagination will run riot and they will come up with all sorts of fun things to do with their toys.  I’d say just roll with it, don’t put the creative brakes on anything unless its unsafe.  Just let them explore the concept in their own way.

For us, ‘Amy’ is Sophie’s favourite teddy.  I said; ‘shall we get Amy and Ted (my old teddy!) to play together in the garden?  ‘YES Daddy: let's get them to have a tea party, let's get them to sunbathe, let's get them to play a game together, let's get them climbing a tree together…’.  So we did!

Once we finished taking our photos (i.e. when the battery on her camera ran out…) we plugged it into our computer and dragged the photos into a folder.  Use whatever software you have or can use.  If you shot your pics on a phone, you can easily find them in Photos (Mac) or similar on a PC and print them from there.

Next, ask your child to choose the order they would like their photos to go in.  Try and help them identify a logical sequence of some kind but whatever they are happy with is fine.  

Now it’s time to make the book.  Cut some plain paper so that it is 2.5cm longer and 2cm wider than your prints.  This will give your photos a 2cm border all around them with the spare 0.5 cm available for you to staple the pages together down whichever side you choose for yur spine.

If you have any colourful paper that will be fun.  If you have some thicker card for the front and back cover, great!  And if you know how to cover a book, then that will add an amazing finishing touch.  In our case we made a hard back book with some nice, thick paper pages and chose some unicorn paper to cover it, obviously…

Ta da! This filed most of the day for us and we created something Sophie thoroughly enjoyed doing and is really proud of.

For the time being, stay safe and enjoy the wonder of doing photography with your family.