Snow Leopard’s Image Capture has a new preference setting for specifying which application to launch when connecting a camera, so you can have iPhoto open when you plug your camera in and another action happen with other cameras.
Go to the Image Capture program in your Applications Folder and start it and plug your camera in. In the bottom left hand corner of the window is a selection drop down for what you want to happen. You can have iPhoto open when you plug your camera in and have Image Capture open for him, so he can work with his photos there, away from iPhoto.
If he happens to get another photo program – like Aperture – Image Capture can be set to open that when he plugs his camera in.
Also see this article at MacWorld: Eight amazing Image Capture tricks, which tells more about Image Capture and what you can do with it.
For earlier versions of OS X, like Tiger and Leopard, there’s a free Preference Pane from Flexibits | Cameras called Cameras, and it does the same thing, except it works outside of Image Capture.