Bob Reck's photostream  

I'm fairly new to what I call "Serious" photography. However, I have been taking photos for quite a long time.

I remember many years ago when my parents bought me my fist camera. It was one of those 110 film cartridge cameras from Kodak (I think). At some point I also had an old polaroid camera and finally a Disc film camera in the 80's. After that, my interest in taking photos sort of died off. I never really got used to the idea continually needing to buy more film. As a kid, and even a college student, I just couldn't afford it.

In 1998, just before I married my wife, we decided that it was time to invest in a "Nice" camera. I can't tell you the model number, but we bought a Minolta SLR from Ritz Camera with a 18-55mm lens (I think). It wasn't anything too great, and honestly I didn't have a clue what I was buying. We took the camera on our honeymoon later that year. After only a few months of shooting with it, it started to malfunction. We sent it back to have it checked out and it came back with everything checking out fine. However, we still had issues like the film spontaneously rewinding in the middle of the roll. I pretty much shelved it after a while.

Flash foward (no pun intended) to 2001. My love of the band U2 leads me to get floor tickets to their first concert of the Elevation tour. I'd gone to first shows before, but this time I was armed with a spankin' new Sony DSC-P1 point-and-shoot digital camera. After shooting photos of U2 and The Coors (opening band) all night, I was hooked on photography.

Zoom ahead to 2004 (ok, that pun was intended) and my first son was born. My interest in photography was taken to the next level as I photographed his every move. I started to learn more about aperature, shutter speeds, white balance, and more. I also realized that my (now) old Sony DSC-P1 just wasn't going to cut it any longer.

Memorial Day weekend 2005... I bought the Canon Powershot S2 IS on the day it was put on the shelf at our local Circuit City. As I started to explore the settings on this camera, I realized that I really needed to look into Digital SLRs. I was just enjoying trying out the different settings on the S2 IS so much and I had a great desire to be able to use different lenses.

In July of 2004 I purchased my first DSLR, the Canon 20D. Since then, I have been slowly building up a cache of equipment. My latest addition is the Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM.

I'm still fairly novice when it comes to photography. But I dream of someday taking pictures for a living and leaving my current day job (computer applications programmer) far behind me.

Update: November 2008 - After drooling over it for a few months, I purchased the Canon 50D with EF-S 18-200mm F3.5-5.6 IS lens.

I hope you enjoy my photos.

SLR equipment:
Canon EOS 50D
Canon EOS 20D
Canon EF-S 18-200mm F3.5-5.6 IS
Canon EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS USM
Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM
Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM
Canon Battery Grip BG-E2 for the EOS 20D
Canon Speedlite 580EX TTL
Gary Fong LightSphere II Inverted Dome Diffusion System
Sto-Fen Omni-Bounce OM-EY for Canon 580EX Flash
Bogen-Manfrotto 3021BPRO Tripod
Bogen-Manfrotto 322RC2 Horizontal Grip Action Ball Head with RC2 Rapid Connect Plate

Point and Shoot equipment:
Canon Powershot S2 IS (Dead with E18 Error, August 2006)
Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ7 (September 2006) (SOLD IT)
Canon Powershot S5 IS (September 2007)