Beginner's luck, and a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
It's quite astonishing how kids, particularly, knowing no better can do things we grown-ups struggle with... like walking over rope bridges, or climbing trees, and stuff.
They have no fears, no pre-conceptions, and a thirst to just engage with the world and try stuff.. and it takes them a long way; they don't THINK about doing things, they just DO them, knowing no better.
It's something I have observed, looking back over thirty odd years worth of film-photo's scanning the negatives to digital; when I knew no better, before I got a bit 'serious' and a bit more clued up about this 'photography' thing, you know, when I just took photo's! I seem to have yielded a FAR higher proportion of 'decent' if not stunning pictures.
When I started getting a bit more serious, and clued up about it all, and using an SLR, it LOOKS like it just all went completely to POT.. and doesn't look like I have got an awful lot better ever since TBH!
Interesting to note that all my early film-photo's were shot with my little 35mm Olympus XA2 'point and shoot'; an incredibly 'easy' camera to use, it's fully automatic exposure control, and 'zone focus'l there's basically only four knobs; an ASA slider to set the film speed; a three position 'zone focus' slider for 'normal' subject distances, and then 'portrait' and 'landscape' either side; the shutter release, and the film-advance! There's very very little to actually cockup, short of leaving a finger infront of the lens!
Entry to 35mm SLR photography came with an Olympus OM10. A Manual focus camera, with 'semi-auto' aperture priority exposure control, that was 'almost' as point and press easy to use, but did beg manually selecting the aperture, and more critically focusing the lens.. but even with just these two extra twiddly bits to mess with, did seem to be 'enough' to start making a lot more effups.. let alone, getting it completely to pot, trying to use the 'manual adapter', or the added encumbrance of the permutations and possibilities offered by a couple of zoom lenses!
Progression from there, was to get even more over-whelmed, reading up and trying to exploit DoF effects and exposure compensation, learning to 'pan' and when to use a tripod, and stuff.
Research and reading provided inspiration and increased ambition far faster than it added useful know-how and ability; and as expectations and standards increased, my ability to achieve them fell even further!
Meanwhile, I started indulging on far more photographic exercises, trying to 'suss' these techniques I was reading up on, and taking photo's of stuff, I really had little interest in, what so ever, 'just' to 'play-cameras' rather than make pictures.. something that, now, scanning all the old negs, has me looking at stuff, wondering why I ever shot it, and the O/H when she spots some bizarre abstract photo-exercise, like say a hay-wain semi-silhouetted against a heavily filter tinted sky, pop up on screen ask "WHAT on earth is that? WHY did you take a picture of... well, WHAT is it?!" Which I honestly cant answer! Begging an OCD wibble, when she asks why I am 'wasting my time' not just scanning it, but touching out dust mots and stuff to which ALL I can reply is "It's on the FILM!.... HAVE to scan them all! I just HAVE to!" Lol.
Having kids, and chasing around after them, trying to stop them running across rope bridges or climb up trees or scramble up cliff-faces and stuff, and not having the 'time' to get pretentious about photo's, and wanting to capture moments, actually took me full circle, to 'just' taking photo's rather than trying to 'do-photography'. Not trying so hard, not thinking so much about it, getting back to basics and concentrating on the subject, rather than the settings, I actually started to make headway again, and those middle era photo', again, contain a lot more more decent photo's and when I had a 'moment' to indulge in applying a bit of more elevated know-how to effect, the odd, well, not stunner, but 'stand out' picture... which more often than not, wasn't to be found in the settings or being cleaver with DoF or anything, but most often, just being a bit careful about composition, or hand-holding or using a white T-shirt as an impromptu reflector to get a bit of shadow fill-in, outside the camera, not in it.
There is a lot to be said for keeping it simple, and getting back to basics, ad just NOT trying so hard....
Like as not, the already mentioned added Depth-of-Field from an incredibly short focal length used on a Phone-Cam's micro-sensor, that makes them effectively focus free, and allows max aperture to be used almost with impunity, paid a big part in the comparison....B-U-T... your daughter was inadvertently exploiting that knowing no better, and just taking photos..... you were trying to 'Do Photography'.. and inadvertently making life hard for yourself and making opportunity to make mistakes, rather than exploit the hard-ware in your hand.
