Photowalking is fun. Especially with kids! All you need are at least one kid and at least one camera.

If you’re not familiar with the idea, photowalking is just a fancy way to say, “Go play outside!” There’s really nothing more to it than simply walking around an interesting area, and taking lots of pictures. Kids love this. For a while, anyway. There are some drawbacks to photowalking, though. Foremost among these is the time/familiarity paradox. You probably don’t have a whole day to blow on driving to an interesting mountain trail that you’ve never been to before, yet those streets around your house aren’t very interesting because the kids have already been there. This is where dads can employ their formidable powers of observation (which, interestingly, often seem to fail near dirty dishes).

Walk the familiar streets, but look for the unfamiliar things. Looking up is cool, and you can find some good shots up in the trees and blue skies. But I think the real action for kids is closer to the ground–look down! Notice the crazy roots on that old tree that you pass every day. Check out the moss growing in the roots. Find the bug that lives in the moss and take his picture!

Here’s a little montage of my guys on a photowalk. We went out on a rainy day and noticed where all the gutter water goes. Luckily for us, we had a waterproof camera and some string. We tied the string to the camera, hit the timer, and lowered the camera into the storm drain to see what we could see. Ever wonder what the inside of a storm drain looks like?