While visiting the 7 lakes in San Pablo, Laguna, I realized that the subject that drew my camera lens the most: kids. They’re the most emotionally transparent people, so it’s a joy to capture them on an image.
No need to pose them, just linger as they do their thing, and before you know it, they’ll present you with opportunity after opportunity to compose a photo.
For some reason, I didn’t feel like doing landscapes, so I whipped out my zoom lens and started shooting like mad. The kids were just wonderful. Even when I was just starting to take pictures, together with animals, I loved snapping photos of children.
I guess they’re also the least suspicious. They don’t see taking pictures as invasive of their privacy, in fact they love hamming it up even. And like animals, they move the way they will, unhampered by the idea of being watched or photographed.
And they don’t have that self-consciousness that usually mars a character portrait of older people. They have an openness that’s a wonder to shoot.
Sometimes, not always of course, the best way to ruin a travel photo, is to tell your subject that you’re taking a picture, and zap, all life and charcter leaves the face, and left is a frozen mask, with an awkward smile, and a nervous expression. Not kids, their faces light up in front of a camera, and they even do tricks.
That’s why going through my San Pablo pics, I decided to post all the kid pics in one set. You just have to love them.
It was like photographing my cats though. You sort of lurk and wait around until they do something really cute, then you pounce by clicking the shutter. It’s a joy when you capture those cute unguarded moments.
But my favorite photo for the ENTIRE trip was of this one kid who really lingered in my head for days…in fact, I’d say until now. He was the saddest looking boy I had ever seen. He wasn’t crying or anything, but he just had so much sadness in his eyes. It was a haunting image that I was never able to shake off. When he looked into the camera, it was piercing. I’ll never forget that sad little boy.
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