Recently, I handed a film camera to my six-year-old son and let him take photos.
Not because I expected incredible results. Quite the opposite, actually. I fully expected blurry photos, accidental shots of the ground and a few frames where none of us would have any idea what he was trying to photograph.
What I didn't expect was how much the experience would remind me why I love film photography in the first place.
Children are growing up in a world where photos are instant. They take a picture on a phone, look at it immediately, decide whether they like it and either keep it or delete it. It's such a normal part of life now that we rarely stop to think about it.
So when I explained that he wouldn't be able to see the photos he was taking, he looked at me like I had completely lost my mind.
"What do you mean? Why?"
I explained that the photos were being captured on film and that we would have to finish the roll, send it away to be developed and wait before we could see any of them.
The idea seemed almost impossible to him.
"But...how will I see the photos?"
The answer, of course, was simple. You don't. You point the camera, hold it still, press the button, and hope.
It's funny because that's something most film photographers accept without much thought, but explaining it to a child made me realise how strange and wonderful the process really is.
As he wandered around taking photos, I noticed he approached the camera completely differently to most adults. He wasn't worried about whether the lighting was right. He didn't care about composition. He wasn't thinking about social media or whether anyone else would like the photo.
He simply photographed things he found interesting.
His siblings playing at the table.
Mum kicking the ball with him.
His friends at his birthday party.
Family.
Things that many adults would walk straight past without a second glance.
Watching him shoot reminded me that children don't spend their lives chasing perfect photos. They chase curiosity.
Every time he lifted the camera, it was because something had genuinely caught his attention. There was no pressure to create something impressive. No expectation that the photo needed to be worthy of sharing online. He was simply documenting the world as he saw it.
Looking through the developed photos later felt a bit like seeing through his eyes.
Some images were blurry. Some were tilted. A few had subjects awkwardly cut off. Technically speaking, they weren't great photographs.
But they were fascinating.
Not because they were perfect, but because they revealed what mattered to him.
As adults, we often become obsessed with outcomes. We want the sharpest image, the best composition, the most aesthetically pleasing result. We compare our work to what we see online and quietly convince ourselves that every photo should look better than the last.
Children don't think like that. For them, the experience is the point.
The process of choosing a subject, pressing the shutter, and wondering what the photo might look like was every bit as exciting as the final result.
In fact, the waiting might have been his favourite part.
Every few days he would ask if the photos had come back yet. When I explained that we were still waiting, he would immediately start talking about the pictures he wanted to show me.
There was anticipation. Excitement. A little bit of mystery. And honestly, that's something many of us have lost.
We're so used to instant gratification that we've forgotten how enjoyable it can be not knowing. We take a photo, look at it immediately and move on. Film asks us to sit with uncertainty for a while. It asks us to trust the process.
That might be one of the reasons film photography is becoming so popular again. In an age of constant notifications, endless scrolling and perfectly curated feeds, film offers something refreshingly different. It slows us down. It forces us to be present. It reminds us that not everything needs to happen immediately.
Watching a six-year-old experience that for the first time was a reminder that photography was never really about perfection.
It was about paying attention. It was about noticing things. It was about capturing moments that mattered, even if nobody else understood why.
When the scans finally arrived, were all the photos technically perfect? Not even close.
But they weren't supposed to be.
What they captured was far more valuable than perfect exposure or flawless composition. They captured curiosity, excitement and a child's unique view of the world.
And perhaps that's something worth remembering the next time we're tempted to worry about whether a photo is good enough.
Sometimes the best photographs aren't the most polished ones.
Sometimes they're simply the ones that remind us how it felt to be there.
