I keep trying to think back to the first time I ever took a picture. I dont think I will ever remember that exact image, but I do remember my first camera. It was a Polaroid. The kind with a flip up flash, that had the gold colored circle that was used for auto-focus. The instant picture that shot out the front kind. I dont remember the model number. I fell in love with photography with that camera. Only I didnt really know it yet. That camera was set aside as just another milestone of my childhood.

Years later photography and me would bump into each other again, in highschool. This was film, the black and white kind. She came to me again dressed in black, a SYT calling herself a Nikon. I began to remember my childhood, and to see the world in black and white. I loved everything about it, even the smell of the chemicals we used to develope the negatives and prints, although it surely wasnt healthy. But the control, from pressing the shutter to agitating those blank white peices of paper and watching an image just appear as if by magic.

It wasnt meant to last I'm afraid. Time and life tends to take us on journeys we would never expect and could never predict. And my life again took me away from photography.

Then, a little over 3 years ago, a funny thing happened. I bought a cell phone. What has a cell phone to do with photography you may ask? As you probably guessed the cell phone had a camera on it. And of course I began to play around and experiment with it. While it was convienient to always have a camera on hand, I was constantly frustrated by the extremely poor quality and inability to control anything beyond the act of pressing the button to take the picture. So a year later I bought a shiney silver camera, the kind called a "point & shoot", a Canon Powershot A70.

This was more like it, but it still did not feel right. Despite having a much greater degree of control and a greater quality of picture, something was missing. And then I realized. I missed my old SLR camera. I missed looking thru that eye piece, the world around me falling away, and the only thing that existed was what I saw thru that tiny window. I missed that KER-CHUNK of the mirror slamming up out of the way to take the picture. I missed so much about photography that I had forgotten about.

And so a year ago I took the plunge. I bought my first digital SLR, a Canon 350D. I say first, for I am already planning on replacing it with something even better! As well as new lenses, a new tripod, filters, bags, the works! What a time to be alive!

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