Point of view: Who's in there?

Kids are one of the great staples of photojournalism. People never seem to tire of the cute, zany, poignant, wondrous photos of the infinite permutations we find in children.

In a perfect world, children would ignore the camera; in reality, most of the time they ham it up in front of the lens. The trick is to get them interested in something besides the photographer (me) or the camera.

None of my standard ploys seemed to work on these two Polish youngsters from Poznan, 3-year-old Maria Krzycztof and her 4-year-old brother Mateviz. They remained fixated on my camera with the big shiny glass on the front. Consequently, I never did get the shot I'd planned to take of these youngsters. But later, when I looked at the film, I realized that maybe I'd gotten something even better.

Here's lookin' at you, kids.