"Nature girl"

Bird feather, taken by my daughter

One day recently, I sat outside on our cement patio, stretched out a sheet and placed a flute my uncle made on it. I moved the flute around, trying to get the best position as I took photos to list the flute on my Etsy shop.

My daughter, meanwhile, seemed fascinated.

"Why are you taking photos outside?" she asked.

"Natural light is better," I said.

"Can I get my tablet and take pictures, too?"

"Sure."

She went inside the house for a few, then came back out.

"It's out of battery," she huffed. "Can I use your phone?"

"No," I said. "I'm using it."

"When you're done?"

"Just grab my tablet," I said, losing patience with the constant questions.

She went back into the house and returned with the tablet in hand. After I walked her through how to take pictures with the device, she started wandering around the backyard, looking to get photos of nature -- our dog, a squirrel, blades of grass, bugs.

I wrapped up my own photo session, took everything back into the house, and told her she could stay outside while I started dinner.

At one point, I glanced out the back door at her. She was standing in the corner, holding the table over the fence with one hand while trying to click the shutter through the chain-link fence with her other hand. I don't know why, but it made me smile.

I went back outside and asked what she was trying to get a photo of. She could see a birds in a field and was trying to get an unobstructed photo to show to her teacher.

"Do you want to go outside the fence to get the photo?" I asked.

She said yes, so we walked through the gate and got as close as possible to the field (a ditch separates our property from that property). I lifted her up and let her shoot the photo from a little higher angle. As we walked back to the house, she saw a bird feather lying on the ground and got a photo of that, too.

"Can I take your tablet to school so I can show my teacher?" she asked.

My tablet isn't very expensive, but the thought of a six-year-old toting it around in a backpack for eight hours did not appeal to me at all.

"Uh, how about we just get a print made of your photos and you take that?" I suggested.

She was very excited at that idea. "Hey, then she can just keep it!" she said.

As we headed back into the house, she asked if she could take photos of nature again the next day after school, too. 

"Sure," I said.

That's my little nature girl.