How this man instilled the love of photography, the love of nature into his two young children, helping them learn to express themselves better, off of the Front Page Sections, translated…
Ching-An Kuo Often Took His Children Out at Night to Shoot the Nocturnal Creature, Helping Them Increase Their Skills of Photographing Insects.
Awhile ago, the N.T.U. Insect Specimen Museum had a photo exhibition, the fifth, sixth graders of Taoyuan Elementary School of Taiwan had won almost ALL the awards, and their photos even got questioned by the online community for being “too professional”, that “the parents must’ve set the cameras up and the kids just clicked the shutters”. This group of elementary year students had been repeated winners of the insect photo competitions before, in recent years, almost every week, they would have their night sessions up the mountains to shoot the insects, and the man behind this was who the kids called, “Daddy Kuo”, Ching-An Kuo.
With Special Needs Children at Home, Adding to His Life Experiences
Kuo is a father, works as a technical operator in a factory, he has two special needs children at home, the eldest has Asperger’s, very stubborn, nobody can deter him from doing what he wanted. His second son has A.D.H.D., difficulties concentrating, and his mother was called to school three times a day.
He took his children up the mountains, because he wanted his children to have a widely varied experiences of life. Four, five years ago, when his eldest was in the fifth grad, he’d taken the kids up the mountains on the weekends and his days off. The kids began to inquire what the insects they saw were, and, as they had the cell phone receptions, he’d looked up the insects online, or photographed the insects with his phone, and, compared the photos to the books when he got home. He’d even set up a point-reward system for his young, ten points for discovering a snake, getting in the car safe, fifty extra points, one point equals one dollar, to encourage his kids to be curious of the world around them, and helping them be responsible for their own safety at the same time.
Photographing the Insects, the Children Used a More Real Angle to See Things
Kuo old, that once he took his kids to find the fireflies on the mountains, they bumped into a snake on the way, and his eldest fell in love instantly, later they’d gone on many nighttime explorations, and even when there are typhoons, his son asked to go, the two put on their raincoats, with the headlights, and, ran into the mountains and forests. They’d found a larva of a firefly, and they’d learned, that there are fireflies year-round.
The families connected because of the children, sometimes they’d gone on these discovery trips together, and, there were over twenty individuals that hiked up together at once. They had once gotten lost on the trails, stung by bees, and, the kids, in order to watch the frog getting eaten by a snake, squatted a long time on the ground, and as they got up, they’d found ants crawling all over their legs, and started itching.
And, the kids improved in their photography skills greatly from these night time discovery trips. Kuo said, that from before he’d let his kids use cell phones to take shots of the insects they encountered, but, the cost to fix the phones from dropping the phones on the floors was huge, and he’d, bought a professional camera for them. He’d gone to the insect photography interest meetings to see what cameras the members used, and, managed to get $30,000N.T., bought his very first professional camera, watched the YouTube videos on how to use the camera, and, worked with his kids to understand how to use the professional camera, and, in recent six months, he’d started, using the camera more fluidly.
“The settings for shooting the insects are one in the same, the technical stuff aside, but the angle to which the kids are shooting, that’s, very genuine.” Daddy Kuo told, that every time they’d gone for the night hikes, the kids would take over two hundred photos, and they’d, adjusted the lenses, the camera settings themselves, and as he’d asked them why they’d taken so many shots, they’d often told him, “they are so cute!”, sometimes, they’d, blown up the photos, and once they’d found two mosquitoes on the snakes they were photographing. And, these unexpected things that the kids shot, are the realest forms of expressions that his children made.
So, this is a man, who is, more than dedicated to his own children, he managed to instill that love of the great outdoors in their lives, and, help them reach out, learned to express themselves better through their photography.
Life, the Obstacle Course 