Lessons From a 16-year-old Photographer
The moment is what matters.
A few years ago, my son, Logan, made it abundantly clear that he wasn’t into photography.
“Are you bringing your camera, dad?”he would ask with his nose scrunched up. He did NOT want me to bring my camera.
And if I ever mentioned that he could use my camera someday, or that I’d teach him photography, he made sure to tell that he would NEVER want to do that.
However, Logan asked me for a camera recently. “Dad,” he said. “Do you have a camera I can borrow?”
We were in Chicago, and it caught me by surprise. I tried to play it off and shrug: “yeah, man, if you want one.” I knew if I got too excited I might ruin the moment.
During this trip, I was doing a video for OM SYSTEM using the OM-3 to do street photography in the Windy City. As a backup, I still brought my OM-1 MarkII, to keep in the hotel room, so I handed it to him.
I set the camera to auto ISO and aperture priority mode with his f/stop set to f/4. (he mostly used the 12-100 f/4 PRO and 12-45 f/4 PRO).
The light would fade eventually, so I told him what would happen with the shutter speed creating blurry photos and told him, “Just keep the camera steady.”
I also showed him how to autofocus and move his autofocus points… and that was mostly it. He ran off and started taking photos.
These are among his first shots:
He asked me “how do you get that cool blur stuff” so I just had him steady his camera on a street lamp. He did the rest.
I KNOW! They are cool!
We walked through some neighborhoods, and he took a few more photos at some local places we found:
A record store:
A historic church:
Then we went hunting for photos in the evening, and he got these of the Congress Hotel:
We walked to the pier the next night.
I LOVE how he noticed details and honed into things I completely ignored:
A series of water abstracts:
A series of interesting clouds:
And just more beauty:
I remember him saying “It’s cool how the clouds and light keep changing.”
He didn’t just say it… he told the story of those moments with his photographs.
It was INCREDIBLE to see him run around the pier with the OM-1 MarkII. He barely spoke, and just kept taking photos as the light faded.
As the light changed, so did the colors - the warmer city lights taking more prominence. He thought that was pretty awesome.
Logan took this next photo and ran toward me. “This looks just like a painting.” I looked through the viewfinder at the photo he had just taken, and saw this:
Wow.
When we found ourselves far away from the lighthouse, he looked back and saw the building surrounded by incredible clouds and color. He ran full speed back toward the lighthouse to get these:
And he just kept shooting:
We drove to a different vantage point:
I mean. WOW, right?
And then a few days ago I asked him if he wanted to run out one morning and take photos in the fog.
He said, “Get me my camera.”
He had claimed the OM-1 MarkII as his own.
We headed out to take photos in the fog, and he took these:
You have to understand that I’m not coaching him at all. He almost never asks questions.
He just lets the camera do it’s thing and holds it super steady to avoid camera blur (made easier with OM SYSTEM’s world-class stabilization).
He focuses 100% on composition.
I’m honestly in awe of many of his shots. This next one is a photo he said he doesn’t even like very much (he wishes he would have stepped a bit more to the right), but I find it so dreamy with the way he framed it all.
The following photograph is another “WOW” one. He said at the time, while pointing to the river, “that looks like a Japanese painting.” And then he took this photo:
HOLY COW. Yes it does.
Finally, he noticed the interplay between light and shadow above us:
I hope you’re okay with me having a PROUD DAD MOMENT with this week’s newsletter.
These are photos that I, as a professional photographer, would be proud to share… and they were done by my son with nearly zero experience.
We often get caught up in countless YouTube videos, learning the technical aspects of photography or arguing about how much distortion there might be in a lens.
We compare ourselves to others.
We argue over megapixels and theory and sharpness, and blah, blah, blah.
My son could not care less about any of that stuff. He just wants to remember the beautiful moments he experiences with a camera.
This week’s YouTube Video is a slideshow-only one I made to feature a lens I didn’t even want to buy: the OM SYSTEM 12-45mm f/4 PRO. However, I’ve found it to be pretty awesome at helping me tell stories, so I put something together with no script - just music and photos from the lens:
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Oh - and this post is 100% AI-free. Every title, sentence, misspelling, and mistake is mine, and I love that.
DEATH TO THE ROBOTS.
Comments? Leave them below or email me: jerredz@gmail.com