A friend asked me the other day how and when I got into photography… which got me thinking. I don’t remember why I started taking photos (although Mom & Dad always had a camera so I was likely modeling after them). I do remember being fascinated by the old film cameras that my parents had stored in the hallway closet—one of them was an old Konica of some kind and I think it had a really cool expanding flash surround with small blue flash bulbs.
In any case, I remember having access to a small film camera pretty early on. At first, I was mostly interested in taking pictures of my pets and my toys. I think I was around nine years old then. Around age 13 or so, I took a 4-H photography course, and learned to do photo stories. In high school I was mostly into candid shots of my friends or family (especially my little nephews and nieces), plus some photos for art class, and I remember filling albums and albums of photos. In third year college, I had the chance to learn black & white photography, including developing my own prints in the darkroom. I borrowed my parents Canon AE-1 for those, and learned to shoot manually. That’s when I finally started to learn technique and to think about composition and concept.
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