When I was 8, my Uncle Joe gave me a little plastic flash camera. When I first threaded a roll of Kodak Verichrome Pan film, size 620, into the camera, closed its back and took it around the neighborhood, I had very little idea of what I was getting into. When I got the green paper envelope containing 12 glossy black-and-white pictures of my family, my neighborhood and the odd pigeon walking across the sidewalk back from the drugstore a week later, something definitely, you'll pardon the expression, clicked.

Later on I got my first 35mm SLR, a 1950's Exakta VX from whom I've taken my Flickr handle and my avatar.

There's so much to see and record, not just famous people and major events, but even things which occupy the mundane, everyday world, things which most people might not notice. The play of light can make an ordinary thing extraordinary.