I've just started photography. This is my first Camera, a K1000 with a Pentax SMC-A 50mm F/2.

It hit me like a rock one day: I need to start taking pictures. There is so much beauty in my everyday life that I take for granted. I couldn't afford a camera so I went a month just trying to appreciate the world as much as I could with my own two eyes. It was like seeing the world in color for the first time. Every falling leaf, every building, every brilliantly lit Atlanta city scape began to burst forth with color and personality that had gone unnoticed for the last 19 years of my life.

It was a month later when I came home from school that I finally laid my hands on my first real camera. Sure, I'd pointed and I shot enough of my friends point and shoots to think I knew about photography but it wasn't until I found this old k1000 in the back of a closet and looked through the view finder that the world of photography suddenly came into focus.

I fell in love, I took my camera everywhere, I shot everything. When my first few rolls came back from walmart a week later, I was shocked to find out what this 30 year old camera and I were capable of. Since then the rolls have continued to roll in and my world has become beautiful.

My girlfriend of four years is my trusty side kick and model. She's not obsessed as I am with every aspect of photography, but she has a great eye and isn't afraid to snatch my camera from me and inform me that "I'm not doing it right."

Right now I'm pretty convinced that digital is the root of all evil. This is largely due to the fact that I've learned everything I know from my k1000 and its uncompromising simplicity. No DSLR owner with a 10-3000mm f/1.2 zoom lens with twenty modes of autofocus, and a 32 region invariable flux capacitated panchromatic light meter with blue tooth connectivity will ever understand the beauty of my k1000's bullet proof metal body and a couple manual focus SMC prime lenses. If you fall into the first category, I highly recommend you invest in some old prime lenses. It's a rather humbling experience and the image quality, contrast and sharpness will blow you away.

Here's where I step off my soap box.