How did you start?

Michael Smith 12

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When did your interest first spark in photography? Was it a family member, a friend, a YouTube video or a random magazine cover? What was your first camera?
 
I began my photo journey in the 70’s when I received my first Kodak instant camera. From there I went to 110 film then eventually bought my first used SLR.
I took all types of photos but primarily to capture memories. It wasn’t until I began wildlife photography that I began to take it more seriously. Since then I have tried to learn/aid others in learning something every time I shoot.
 
I grew up in a darkroom.
 
My dad had an Asahi Pentax 35mm SLR. We traveled a lot and he brought it along. Sometimes he shot black and white and developed the film at home. This was in the early 70's.

Arlington (VA) has a very good darkroom and I started using the Pentax to shoot and the county darkroom to develop. That was in the 7th grade. Later I purchased a Nikon with paper route money.
 
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My wife & I were on a cruise about 6 years ago. We had a Canon Rebel camera. All my photos in the ship were just terrible. One of the photographers on the ship said, "Why don't you shoot in manual?" I replied, "What's that?" After we got home, I got online and started reading about manual setting onlin . I practiced in our backyard for about a year. Now, I am hooked.
 
Wanted memory of our first, then second child and I was working in Prepress for a large commercial printer. Was processing images all day, so it was easy to build a basement darkroom, process my own film and make my own prints. The year was 1979 and my first camera was a Canon AE-1.
 
I started in elementary school with a used 120 rollfilm box camera that I bought for ten cents at the school rummage sale. My next camera was my first "good camera" which was a Kodak
Pony 135B, a Camera made from 1950 to 1953. It was a 35mm camera with scale focusing, a collapsible 51 mm f/4.5 "Aniston" lens, and shutter speeds of 25 50,100,200,and B. Shutter cocking was done manually for each frame, making accidental double exposures easy! The camera had knob rewind and advance, and had no built-in light meter of any kind.
 
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Wow, these stories are super inspiring and nostalgic to read to. To tell the truth, I haven't even heard of some of the cameras you guys have mentioned
My dad gifted me a camera a few years back and I never got around to using it. But I have been experimenting for the past few months and it is a whole new world.
 
I started my journey into the photographic world in 1980 after I received a Pentax K1000 for X-Mas. After I graduated from high school in 1983 I took a photo course and a computer course in college. I decided that photography would be my vocation after I got an A in Photo-1 and a C in the computer class.
In 1985 I got my first job working in a photo lab and to this day it is my main source of income (currently a retouch artist for Schiller's Camera here in St. Louis MO who has been in business since 1892, I also do all the BW film processing for the store at home). I've also worked in studios taking photos of product for catalogs and selling my "Art" photos in shows and small art/craft stores.
Still shooting film I love to process and print my black-n-white in the darkroom.
 
Pentax K1000

My wife had the K1000 at about the same time in prep school. I donated it a while back in hopes it would get used in a Summer photography program for kids. What a workhorse for beginners that camera was.
 
Pentax K1000

My wife had the K1000 at about the same time in prep school. I donated it a while back in hopes it would get used in a Summer photography program for kids. What a workhorse for beginners that camera was.

Those k1000's certainly are tough, I still use mine.
 

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