The Eye

Photographers and artists talk about having "the eye." My friend Linda told me a story about going along with a photographer friend while he shot photos. He'd set the camera up on a tripod, frame his shot, then call her over to look through the viewfinder.

"I'd look, and I'd say, 'Where is that?' He'd point, and say, 'Right there,' but I could never find what I saw in the camera. I'd be standing right there, and I still couldn't see it."

We have always handed cameras to our kids, especially on vacation. When they were too small to handle a "real" camera, or when they were headed somewhere that we thought one might get lost or stolen (like summer camp), we gave them disposable cameras.

When our son was 3, we were headed with him to a nearby lake to take photos while the "big kids" were in school. We stopped at the home of a friend of my husband's family; she needed help with something, and my husband had volunteered. She had a rug made from the skin of a wolverine, and my son was fascinated. He asked her, "Can I take a picture of that?"

"Sure," she said.

We reminded him to turn on the flash indoors, and he said, "I know." Then he squatted down right in front of the rug, and shot it head on, with the wolverine's glass eyes looking right into the lens. My husband and I looked at each other and said, "He has it." Most people, even adults, would have stood over the rug and shot downwards, getting the whole thing in view. Not my kid; he knew, instinctively, where the good angle, the dramatic angle, was.

We usually have more than one camera going at any one time. My husband and I take jobs solo when the schedule dictates it, but it's always best to have both of us. A week ago, we were photographing our niece's wedding. One of us had the telephoto lens, good for zooming in for closeups, and the other had the wide angle lens, good for group shots and sweeping vistas. It saves time; at the exact moment that one of us is taking this shot

the other is shooting this.

We do this without actively communicating what we're doing. After so many years, it's a well rehearsed dance.

Sometimes, though, we'll be thinking the same thought at the same moment. Then the photos from the two cameras look like this:

When my son was 16, he went to Paris. We sent one of the good cameras, of course. There was no way a member of our family was going to Europe without decent equipment. While on a tour bus, he took this shot:

 Two years later, I took this from a Paris tour bus:

Genetics? Training?

I didn't see the images together until months after we got back home. It was a nice moment to say, "Yep. That's my kid."