It was back in 2002 in my last year in High School where in a a unit of a Media English Course at EC Drury that we did a unit on Photography, this of course wasn't my first experience with Photography, I had been for a few years been shooting with my parent's pocket point & shoot 35mm cameras, but this unit really introduced me to photography, using Single Lens Reflex cameras, and darkroom developing. However the projects we did were all shot using a point & shoot, until I picked up an old Minolta Hi-Matic 7s rangefinder at a Garage Sale. That little rangefinder served me well until a couple years later when a Minolta SRT-102 SLR was found at a Garage Sale. I was pretty much shooting as much as I could! By 2005 I had picked up my first digital camera, again a Minolta DiMAGE Z2, an open box floor special. Digital became my medium for the next couple years, my film gear sat collecting dust, in '07 I finally took the plunge and picked up a D70s, having not liked the offerings from Sony (Which had purchased the Minolta Camera line). It was late in 2007 when Film returned to my arsenal in the form of a Nikon F80. But it continued to play a secondary role until I found the Film Photography Podcast and I haven't looked back since.

I continue to shoot primarly Nikon for my 35mm work using an F4, F3, or FM2 since the glass is compatible between the three and can be used on my D300. I do get strange stares from people when I have old Nikon lenses on my digital, but it's still dead sharp. I have also moved into medium format work using mostly 6x4.5 (Pentax) and 6x6 (Rolleiflex TLR). Large format I know is just around the corner. I do love shooting in b/w but I've been pushing myself to shoot more colour especially with Kodak's new offerings of Portra and Ektar.

The Tools
Digital:
Nikon D300, Olympus E-P1

35mm:
Nikon F4, Nikon F3, Nikon FM2, Leica IIIc, Contax G2, Olympus Trip 35, Smena 8m

120:
Rolleiflex 2.8F, Pentax 645, Bronica SQ-Ai, Debonair

4x5:
Speed Graphic

Instant
Polaroid SX-70, Polaroid Automatic 250 Land Camera, Polaroid 600 OneStep CloseUp