Hi fellow Hiveians,

Today I wanted to share some photos not from myself, but from my son!

Junior Photography

My son is definitely a unique kid, as it should be! He's got his own interests and it really cracks us up sometimes. There are naturally some things though that he enjoys and partakes in that may not be something other kids do, but he takes after his mom and dad. Photography is certainly one of them!

The little man has had a knack for photography. He sees me taking pictures quite often on our trips, and my wife as well when she's in the mood. This means he's always familiar when I want to stop and take a photo of something, or pause while we are walking, hiking or fishing to take a photo. This has turned into an interest from his perspective in trying to get into photography a little bit, which we are more than happy to indulge him in!

A few years ago now at this point, I got my wife a new DSLR camera for Christmas. She likes taking pictures and we had an old DSLR camera ourselves but it wasn't really cutting it. The pictures weren't as crisp and clear as they used to be, although they were decent. It was time for an upgrade, and the previous camera has gotten me plenty of use out of it and I definitely got my moneys worth! The first DSLR camera I bought was back in 2008 I think, maybe 2009? I purchased this new camera in 2022 I think it was, so we certainly got plenty of years out of it!

This also meant though, that we had a camera that we weren't going to use. It was now considered our "back-up" camera which may sound pretentious, but at the same time, I couldn't really sell it for much money. Maybe 50, 100$? I felt like that really wasn't worth it, considering it was still in decent shape and we could always use a backup, or a second camera that already had the specific lens on it. So we kept it! Our son though, had expressed an interest in using the new one which was fine, except it was much more expensive and it was also heavier.

We try not to baby him, and let him experience and experiment with things. We give him trust so that he can trust himself as he gets older. This is a delicate balance with kids that's for sure, because you don't want to shelter them too much but at the same time, you also don't want to give them maximum freedom and they don't learn to appreciate it.

So what we did as a compromise is we gave him the old camera, and he was ecstatic! He had taken plenty of photos with the camera since he is always with us and we took it with us fairly regularly, so he was familiar with it. The fact that he had his very own camera though was what made his little face glow, and he was so excited. He has since taken several thousand photos himself, many we don't need to post here as they are of my wife and I around the house and stuff, but he's also taken some really cute and interesting photos of things that he deems important to himself!

One of his recent interests and seeming obsessions is collecting sea glass from the beach. We've done this plenty of times over the years because we go to the beach fairly regularly, but for whatever reason this year he made it a point to specifically look and grab some sea glass, and make sure we keep it. We indulge him because we make sure the pieces he grabs are smooth ones, not ones that he's going to slice his shit up on and get hurt. He felt like he wanted to put some of his prized pieces on display for people and snapped a bunch of photos with his camera! I think he did an excellent job for sure! The pictures are of varying zoom which is great because it's a solid 50mm lens, which means it doesn't move. He had to get closer or sit further away for the photos so him having a bit of variability here was great.

His other lifelong hobby that we love to help him with is Lego. We've got tens of thousands of Lego pieces in the house, and more sets than we can recall. There are giant buckets full of Lego in the house and there are figurines and things lying everywhere. He wanted to take a few photos of one of his newer sets, seemingly a snowmobile of some kind.

I think that it's wonderful and important that we can help our son indulge in some hobbies like this, that are interesting and different but also ones that he can share with us as his parents. He certainly has his own little hobbies and interests but I think it's good for him to also do normal kid stuff like follow his parents around and do things that we do. Eventually he's not going to be interested in these things and that's going to be a challenge for us to take mentally, but in the meantime we are soaking in these wonderful memories and letting him explore important, albeit different pieces of technology around him.

What about you, do you try to indulge your children in different or alternative types of hobbies? Let me know in the comments what they are!

^-CmplXty. _{Real human written content, never AI. All pictures are mine unless otherwise stated}

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