Earlier this month I had the honor of being "shadowed" by a future photog.

Hannah is an 8th grade student in Allen, TX and as part of an assignment for her Career Investigations class, she had to follow someone for a day who was involved in a career she was interested in pursuing. I didn't have any actual jobs lined up for that day, so Hannah came over and I walked her through the steps I take on a typical photo shoot.

She had just bought her first DSLR, a Nikon D5000, so I let her try it out with my strobes and set up. We each took turns sitting in the stool posing for the photographer. After we were done shooting I uploaded the photos and showed her my typical editing process. Above is one of the pics I took of Hannah while we were trying different lighting setups.  

Hannah is quite the eager learner. She can easily grasp the basic concepts of photography and loves experimenting. I talked to her a lot about the importance of "style" and told her not to be limited so much by "rules." i.e. be sure to see what you're photographing before you start worrying about the rule of thirds, etc.

For such a young photographer, she has a very good eye. You can see some of her work on her Flickr Photostream.

She also has the photo pictured below on display at the Allen Public Library until Dec. 31st. This one was taken with her Kodak point and shoot...before she owned the D5000. I thought it was great capture and was really amazed at the amount of detail she was able to capture in the glasses:

 Her way of seeing the world through the camera lens is something that can take her far, as long as she keeps "seeing" the way she does and doesn't get too influenced by what everyone else is pushing as "good." That's where styles start to get stale, and what photography needs is fresh perspectives. Hannah is definitely on the right path.