Cameras have been a part of my life since my conception. You might even say I owe my very life to the world of photography.

 

It all started with my father's need of film for his Retina IIa. He was in the Air Force and stationed in France at Villefranche-d'Allier in the post-WWII years.

 

[I still have that Retina.]

 

The closest camera shop was in the nearby town of Cosne d'Allier. It was there in Studio Couture where he met my mother. Age 19 at the time, she was keeping the books [both sets as she likes to say], shooting weddings, working in the darkroom and waiting on the counter. She was also skilled at the understated hand coloring that was popular for portraits at the time.

 

As the old rhyme goes: First came love, then came marriage, and then came Coletta in the baby carriage.

 

In the early 50s, after they came to the US, my mother used the Retina to take pictures of her baby girls. She would send the film to her father in France who would process and print it and send these beautiful little books of the pictures back to us. He also sent more film with each batch of photos. Prehistoric Flickr, so to speak.

 

When we were a little older my mother had her own darkroom setup in the basement for awhile. I used to love to watch her develop prints. But soon there were more babies and the darkroom gathered dust.

 

It was my grandfather [Pépé] who gave my sister and me our first cameras when I was seven years old. He brought both of us our own Brownie Starluxe cameras with built in flash units [Fabriqué en France] on his first visit to the States.

 

I have carried on an on-again-off-again love affair with photography ever since.

 

I remember my grandfather's lovely natural light portraits as well as many of his studio black and whites. But most of all, I just loved taking trips in the car and taking pictures right along with him and my mother when he was visiting us in the States.

 

I foolishly cast the Brownie aside when I graduated to my first 35mm camera as a young adult. However, I was fortunate enough to find an exact replica at a brocante on one of my trips to France in 2007.

 

I am also fortunate to have my grandfather's last camera, a Leica M2, as part of my little memory lane camera collection.

 

There have been a string of 35mm film SLRs, many photography and darkroom classes at the community college in the 70's. Fast forward to another lifetime and it was a series of small digital snapshot cameras starting around 2003 -- mostly to record my later-in-life reunion and love affair with France. Then there were a few good years with a Nikon D40x.

 

In the last couple of years I've mostly been an iPhone photographer adhering to the philosophy that the best camera is the one at hand.

 

In late 2013 I started shooting with a Canon Powershot SX510 HS. After about a year I purchased my Canon 70D. I still have my eye on a mini sized full-frame sensor camera with interchangeable lenses like the Sony A7. It would be the perfect solution for packing light AND getting great images when traveling.

 

I find such joy in all the diverseness I see on Flickr -- photos and photographers alike. I love images that take me beyond the confines of my daily life–showing me parts of the world I may never see firsthand. But I am particularly fond of pictures that remind me of my travels in France, Belgium, England and Ireland as well as my favorite US cities and countrysides.

 

Thank you to all who so graciously share their photos here. You enrich my life every day.

 

Besides photography, I love to cook, entertain, travel when I can, ride my bike [which is the vantage point from which many of my pictures are taken these days] and collect old books [That's the old printer / typographer in me].

 

I've lived in Pittsburgh, PA for the last 20 years and I think it is one of the most photogenic cities in the US. I'm always happy to play tour guide for any visiting photographer.