OK, I though about this some, so here goes:

I have been shooting photographs since I was young. My parents always had a camera and used it a lot. When my Mom died I brought home with me 3 boxes full of negatives and small prints. I packed up 4 boxes of framed photographs. I truly don't know what to do with all that stuff. It is still in my garage 6 years later. Perhaps the most prized thing I brought home was a very, very old photo album that was in her cedar chest. It has photos that date WAYYYYY back, not sure but definitely from before she was born.

When I went to college I spent way too much money on cameras and lenses and film and all the stuff to make a darkroom. 5 of us guys in college had a darkroom in the basement of a house outside of town, we could print both b&w and color. I owned 25% of a drag racing car during the last 2 years of college and we went to different tracks somewhere every weekend for 7 or 8 months of the year. I started a fairly successful business called Clyde's Speed Photography where I would take pictures of guys cars one weekend and go back and deliver the prints the next week or so. They LOVED it!!

I used the same Minolta SRT-101 for all of this and for several years after college shooting landscapes mostly. I have 6 prints on the walls of my house that I shot between college and marriage. After I got married and we had our son I bought a series of point and shoot film cameras and put the Minolta in the closet. We took tons of photos of our son as he grew up but eventually lost interest as he became more and more uncomfortable in front of a camera lens. So for several years I stopped shooting all together.

Sometime around the whole 2k thing we moved to Southern California and I bought my first digital camera a Olympus Camedia C-2000 Zoom. I loved it, but in hind sight it was awful!! The noise was just terrible especially in the skies. Eventually I bought a Nikon D70s and later a D90 and a few decent lenses. I had the 25 - 85 kit lens that was actually pretty good. and I eventually bought a Tokina 12-24 and a Nikon 70 - 300 VR. both VERY good lenses for a AS-P sensor camera.

My enduring interest has been sappy sunsets and landscapes ever since I spent nearly 6 months on the road in the late 70's and then subsequently 3 years living in Lake Tahoe, CA. Other than my years of shooting my son as a child when he would still tolerate being in front of the lens, I have never strayed far from those motifs.

In recent years I have revisited film and am LOVING it. I still have the Minolta that I had in college and believe it or not it still works just fine, thank you!!! The Rokkor 50mm f1.7 that I kept all those years is clean and just a fine as ever. I have also acquired a couple of other MD vintage lenses. I also have scoured ebay and CraigsList for a Nikon FM, FE, F100 and F3HP. I have a very fine collection of Nikon primes, some AF and some AI-S. I have a Nikon Coolscan 4000 and a PC with LR, PS CS5 as my darkroom.

One of the BEST purchases that I have ever made in photography is the Panasonic Lumix LX3 soon to be replaced with the LX5. This is a WONDERFUL little camera. It is always with me in my backpack. When seriously shooting I carry a film camera, a couple of primes and the LX5. I haven't shot with my D90 much in a year or more. Come to think of it I should sell it!!

I generally hate HDR, I LOVE layer masks in PS instead. I also have finally warmed up to Lightroom. I originally bought v1 and never started really using it until v3. But I think I will never turn back.

My current love is to hike around the Southern California deserts and mountains and beaches and just shoot what I see that I like. If when I develop and scan the film I see one that I like, I "develop: it in LR and/or PS and if I like the results I post it and/or print it.

Other than going on about my Virginia Hillbilly ancestry, that's about it...