Give a Boy a Camera

Now that Shaun has graduated to something fancier, we sometimes turn the boys loose with our little point-and-shoot camera. I always enjoy seeing what they choose to take pictures of and how they go about doing it.

Willem thought it would be a great idea to take a picture of the TV when it was on, so we have a lot of photos of white, blurry fields of light. He's also very short (not for a four year-old, but compared to me), so there are lots of alarming pictures of me taken from exceedingly unattractive angles.

I include the following picture (taken by Willem) because it perfectly encapsulates a Wednesday afternoon in the Martin household. On Wednesday nights I go to my writing group. So on Wednesday afternoons, you'll often find me like this: showered but sans makeup, wearing my most comfortable clothes, sitting like a zombie in front of the computer and abandoning the kids to their favorite babysitter, the television. If I ever manage to get started writing, Wednesday is the one day I give myself permission to neglect all homemaking duties and just try to get enough words down on paper to be worth reading that night. My blank stare and the partially-filled computer monitor indicate that I was actually getting some writing done on this particular day.

I'm not sure why my hand is so fancy.

When Nels takes pictures, he experiments with the unconventional: he'll lay on his back or stomach to get a shot:

Or twirl:

And, of course, he always knows how to bring out the best in his brother.