Because kids generally shoot what is of interest to them, as opposed to trying to compose some wondrously sophisticated work of art, there is a clarity and directness that cuts straight to the chase.

It is these qualities that I suspect the organisers of ''Snap 100 - A Kids Eye View'' are trying to capture and preserve.

A Centenary of Canberra event that has been artfully extended into this year, Snap 100 has nine separate categories covering those under five years through to 12-year-olds.

The winning work in each category will be used as the inspiration for nine pieces by Canberra Glassworks artists.

While entries were initially solicited through local schools with each being asked to nominate an entry in each of the age categories, a wider net has since been cast.

''Parents and guardians'' can lodge entries directly on behalf of their young charges.

The best way to do this is to follow the links on the www.canberra100.com.au website.

In the digital age, children's photography has changed dramatically since my early attempts to record family members, pets, friends, holidays and the landscape around our home with a hand-me-down Box Brownie close on 50 years ago.

Many of my surviving photographs are blurred by movement (slow shutter speeds) and suffering from dodgy exposure that on occasion has created some very interesting ''special effects''.

Then there are the many that lean to the left or the right, departing from the vertical in a rakish Italian postcard fashion.

They do not bear comparison with the images we reproduce today, which are the beneficiaries of a big technological revolution that married autofocus and auto-exposure technology to digital image capture.

Because exposure and focus are taken care of, even a four-year-old can shoot a technically near perfect image on a little digital or phone camera.

This allows them to concentrate entirely on the subject.

While I would be the last to jog the elbow of the judges, I was particularly taken by Phoebe Hefler's My Bro on a photo adventure.

Her brother, Darwin, took Christmas in Civic Square 2013.

Equally impressive is Izzy Grame's My Bendy Jayz Friends Celebrating 100.

Izzy and her friends all take classes at the Jayz Dance Company.

On the subject of the visual arts, a reader taken by our recent essay on the National Gallery's magnificent sculpture garden has drawn my attention to a wonderful piece of work at the Gundagai Tourist Information Centre.

While the town is best known for its famous statue of the dog that famously sat (or shat depending on which version you choose to believe) on (or in) the tuckerbox over a hundred years ago, its most incredible artwork is much more sublime.

It is Frank Rusconi's ''Marble Masterpiece'', a 1.5-metre-square and 1.2-metre-high exquisitely crafted visualisation of an imaginary Baroque Italian palace set in a formal square that showcases dozens (possibly hundreds) of different types of marble collected from all over NSW.

Rusconi, a monumental mason who trained in Italy and had worked on the Saint Marie's Cathedral near Paris, also made the bronze statue of the dog.

He spent 28 years on his ''masterpiece'', cutting and turning and polishing 20,948 individual pieces by hand. He completed the work in 1938, 16 years after losing much of the sight in one eye in 1922.

Rusconi died in 1964 and the masterpiece, now on permanent display in the Gundagai Tourist Information centre (for a modest fee), is his monument.