Discovering the joys of photography

This is my best friend's daughter on her first outdoors walk with her toy camera.

It takes very low resolution, low quality pictures, and allows the user to add very cheesy "effects" (frames, hats, rabbit ears etc.) - but she is absolutely loving it. You can kind of see the fun of catching people's expressions right there on her face.

I do think photography is one of the best gifts you can give, and I have a story that proves it.

The year was perhaps 1995 and we were in the US for my brother in law's wedding. His two brothers were rather useless when it came to ideas for a gift for the new couple, even though they had known their brother all their life and his fiancee for over 10 years - men, you know?

I'd noticed that the fiancee really liked taking family pictures, on her little compact camera. So I got the idea: why don't we give them a nice SLR? Give them a proper camera to capture their life with? Better yet, why don't we take pictures during the wedding and reception, then go to 1 hour photo and give them the camera with the pictures?

Well, it worked. I don't think I have ever made a gift that worked that well. The camera was loved, and used it so much it died of *use* after 7 or 8 years (the dealer said he'd never seen that when they tried to get it repaired, the buttons were so worn out with use), and they bought another similar film SLR to replace it.