how did you get into photography? did any particular experience(s), camera(s), etc. unlock the hobby for you?
Besides disposables on vacation I never took pictures on film in my youth. Schools I attended didn't have darkrooms or photography courses, as far as I'm aware. I've always struggled to differentiate memories or place them on a timeline, and am awful at visualizing things, so I sure do wish now I had done, but it was really digital photography that brought me in, because I grew up on internet.
Before I cared about photos, and around the turn of the millennium, I had a shitty Logitech Quickcam. Besides the occasional still picture I also fucked around shortly with being a "camboy," which alongside my Winamp shoutcasting career is proof enough I was born in the wrong era.
At some point in 2001 I got an HP PhotoSmart C200, a 1 megapixel beast of a thing. 90% of my first photo era was selfies, usually heavily photoshopped with song lyrics or whatever, to share on IRC or LJ. It wasn't just the desire to connect, but also I was in circles where producing visual art was common, and I never developed the ability to draw. So it was me and Photoshop til death do us part.
My first photography era ended on a roadtrip when I blew a gasket in Grants Pass, OR and gave the dude who came to look at it the contents of my trunk (digital camera, bag of salvia, and a sword) as payment for him getting the engine to work about another 10 minutes before it died again and I had to ditch the car anyway.
A couple years later I started smoking weed all the time and bought my first DSLR, a Nikon D70. The interchangeable lenses and flash shoe meant that beyond selfies I could fuck around with extension tubes and reverse mounting for macro photography, and the place we were renting had a small fenced in backyard so I could get stoned and just try to take pictures of dirt or bugs for an hour to see if anything worked.
I briefly tried film photography during this period, and by briefly I mean one roll of black and white (400CN, a not-real C-41 process black and white, in a Nikon EM that I thought was broken but knowing what I know now it just needed a battery) and one roll of medium format color (can't remember stock, in a Mamiya C330; the same model I use today, though actually my old one was a much better specimen than my current one.) I was working food service at the time and the cost was too much for me to get comfortable with even though it was a pittance compared to what it is now. But hey, you always get scans now which wasn't true then.
I quit smoking weed and stopped taking photos.
Years later I got a first generation Fuji X100 because it looks cool and back then the idea of a digital eyepiece viewfinder in a mirrorless rangefinder shape was insane and sick as hell. It takes fine pictures but it felt awful to use after being used to an SLR with real focus rings on the lenses and if I can't stim on something I'm not going to carry it with me so I hardly ever used it.
Then, after 15 years in the greater Boston area, we moved down to Brooklyn and decided to get a Nikon DSLR again, the D7200. I didn't know why. We'd just adopted a couple new cats so I knew I'd take pictures of them, but beyond that I had no plan. No itch to become a New York Street Photographer or do photoshoots for up-and-coming leftist podcasters. I just remembered liking it and wanted to try again.
Then I found out about developing black and white film in instant coffee, and from there I realized you don't need a darkroom to develop color film either, and then I found out there are different birds around at different times of the year.
And frankly it has kind of just spiraled since, even if I am in kind of a lull the past couple months.
Anyway, sorry, what was your question?
