I gave my seven year old a DSLR and had him cover the DC Auto Show (Gallery)

I’ve been to my local auto show in D.C. for quite a few years. It was likely my first “press event” in which I showed up, went to the media office and talked my way into a media ticket. This year I skipped the Media Day because of a schedule conflict, and almost didn’t go at all. However, on a dull Saturday morning I decided to fire up the 2022 Kia Niro EV (review coming) and head into DC with my youngest in tow. I took business cards and jokingly told him he would be my camera person.

When we hit the check-in desk I was like “my cameraman and I would like media passes please”. He had my DSLR over his shoulder and she thought that was just the cutest. So we both set about exploring the two floors of vehicles. The 62 (lightly edited) photos below are his view from the viewfinder of my Canon Rebel T2i.

SUVs and Crossovers

I started with crossovers and SUVs not because of my preference, but because of his. Of the 62 photos that were useable (he took twice as many but I won’t subject you to those) 18 of them were of crossovers and SUVs. The kid really likes what Ford is doing these days. Or perhaps I was too busy selling people on the Mach-E in my spare time and wouldn’t let him leave.

Maybe a bit of both.

Electric Vehicles

Speaking of the Mach-E, there it is. There were a couple on hand and I was 48 hours from picking mine up (spoiler alert, it happened, you should follow me on social media) so I may have been pretty hyped about it. I definitely answered some questions while I was milling around.

Sporty and Exotic

Thankfully 20 of the photos were of sporty or full-on exotics. His best picture may be the new Nissan Z, he knew I was excited to see it. Oh, and he learned the woes of trying to capture a large area with people around as he desperately tried to get these Ferraris in the same shot.

Trucks

No comments here, he liked the trucks. Especially the big Army one.

Interiors

Interiors are hard, especially with low light. That’s probably why the Camaro convertible interior came out the best. There were a lot more that didn’t make it, your eyes will thank me.

Engine Bays

The kid likes engine bays. Unfortunately at 52″ tall, he couldn’t get a good angle on some of them. I had to wade through a bunch of blurry tip-toe shots that got cut.

Concepts…and Robots

Behold, the Toyota Rhombus and some Ford robot. Moving on.

An Corolla

This just didn’t fit any of the other categories. It’s a Corolla.

Finally, here is the photographer practicing his craft. Not terrible for his first outing, he probably would have done a lot better with my iPhone. Thanks for viewing, he is going to be super excited to see this when he gets home.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

The maximum upload file size: 64 MB. You can upload: image, audio, video. Links to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other services inserted in the comment text will be automatically embedded. Drop files here

5 responses to “I gave my seven year old a DSLR and had him cover the DC Auto Show (Gallery)”

  1. smaglik Avatar
    smaglik

    Awesome. Thanks for the laughs on this! I loved goin to auto shows when I was a kid… 🙂

  2. Sjalabais Avatar
    Sjalabais

    This was actually amazing. I expected a lot of “Craigslist-shots” with the car being too big for the photo. But I guess your kid beats just about half of the typical car selling photographers.

    A downside of living in a sparsely populated area with no homehrown industry is few auto shows. But the ones I’ve taken my son to have been formative events for him. It’s great fun to take kids to these!

    The Toyota Rhombus has a quite ridiculous rhombass…please, let it be functional in some way.

  3. OA5599 Avatar
    OA5599

    Sounds like a fun learning experience. Great job. For the engine shots, you might teach him how to shoot using the rear display instead of the viewfinder, so he can hold the camera high.

    The first time my kid used my DSLR, it was at a Lemons race. He happened to capture a rule violation, so we took the photographic evidence to the judges, and they issued a black flag because of it.

  4. Troggy Avatar
    Troggy

    I’m getting mine started early too. Here she is at 2-and-a-half picking up my hobbies.

  5. crank_case Avatar
    crank_case

    Still managed to take more coherent shots than some try-hard pros.