My kids get into photography.

Seems like everyone in our house has been taking pictures recently. Our 13-year old son Matt went on a trip to North Georgia with his Montessori class, and took some pretty good waterfall pictures. (Unfortunately, he accidentally put the camera into a mode where it took 640x480 pixel shots, instead of the normal 2272 x 1704 shots that my Canon G2 takes. But they still look pretty good on the computer screen ...)

We - and Matt - discovered his photography interest almost by accident. My dad gave Matt and his brother a cheap HP digital camera for Christmas a couple of years ago. Matt took it to New Mexico to visit his grandparents in the Summer of '02. They went around Mesa Verde, and he took some shots, but after the trip was over, the camera went back into Matt's room, and we never downloaded the pictures he took.

We didn't actually get around to looking at pictures until this year. When we did, I was amazed - our then 11-year-old had got some shots that weren't always technically pretty - cheap camera, after all - but showed a pretty darned fine eye for an 11 year old, or really for most 21-90 year-olds. His best pictures were of Mesa Verde. We especially liked one shot through a doorway of stone steps. We asked what made he decide to take that picture, and he said that he noticed that I always tried to take shots from odd places and angles, so he though that shot looked like something I might try. I guess some things do rub off, even if you don't try.

So now Matt's trying to save for his own camera. He did some research, and decided the Canon A70 was probably the best bet. (If I was choosing for him, I'd be taking with the A80 - 4 megapixels vs 3, and it has the swing out screen like the G2. But it's more like $400 vs $300 for the A70. Either amount is a pretty big stretch for a young teen.)

In the mean time, he's been making good use of my G2. He did some photos for My Atlanta, an event promoting photography in Atlanta held back in October. Three of his photos won prizes! (Here's one of Matt's prize winners; unfortunately, they awarded the other two after we left, and so we don't know which other two pictures they liked.

And if want to see what else Matt has been up to, check out the rest of Matt's pictures.

And our 10-year-old daughter Katie has been at it, too. Katie's pictures are interesting because she's been watching both Matt and me, and so her choice of subjects is somewhat derivative of what we're taking. But that's arguably the best way to learn - try to reproduce what you like that others do, and then push it in your own direction.