As an aside on the trip, I find it fascinating how digital has changed how kids deal with photography, scenery, and trips. When I was a kid, I didn't get a camera until about 12 or 13, and then just enough film and flashbulbs to take maybe 12 pictures. And you waited a couple of months to find out how your pictures came out because you couldn't see the first ones until you took the last picture on the roll, and then another couple of weeks for processing. (Admittedly, I'm old, and things had improved a bit by the time digital was phasing out film.) But today, Kasia can have a cheap digital camera at age 4; her camera shows her what she took immediately, and she can take about 5000 photos with the memory chip I got her without any further investment in film or processing. Tigana, at age nine, has developed quite an interest in architecture because she has been photographing it since she was six. We first loaned Tigana a digital camera when touring Casa Loma years ago, on what was going to be a fairly hopeless attempt to interest her in family history (her great grandfather had worked there back in the day) and it was a revelation to us how having the ability to take pictures suddenly engaged her in the tour. Instead of being bored, she proved an excellent photographer and set out to document her journey. The ability to constantly experiment with the camera and to receive instant feedback must imply that these kids will have a fundamentally different experience of photography and (hopefully, though I recognize, not necessarily) get a lot better at it a lot faster than anyone in my generation could.
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