Growing up, my family traveled all over the US. We'd drive almost every day of our vacations, stopping each night to camp. On the days we didn't drive, we saw many of the natural and man-made wonders of this country, and my family photographed it all. After the vacation, my father would rush out to get all of the film developed, most of which was slide film, and then we'd spend hours looking at the slides as my father would narrate the wheres, whens, and how he took a particular picture. This was of course unbearable for me as a young boy but is now something I treasure!

My father introduced me to photography when I was 7 or 8 years old. I started out on an old Kodak Instamatic with B&W 110 film. Soon after I inherited another Kodak camera that took 126 color film. I'd take as many pictures as I had film for on every trip, and my father would advise, critique, and encourage my photographic addiction.

It wasn't until I moved to Maryland in 1991 that I bought a second-hand Canon AE-1 Program from an aerial photographer I worked with (hi, Randy!) and started working with 35mm film. The AE-1 took really nice photos, but had some problems with the film advance, which finally caused me to lose half of the pictures of my younger brother's wedding. (I'm finally getting to scan some of the negatives and slides from those years, which I'll put up on the Photo Albums page ASAP...)

Soon after my brother's wedding, I replaced the AE-1 and lenses I had with a Canon Elan 2E and a couple Canon lenses - the 28-105mm and 75-300mm consumer zooms. These served me well for a couple years, at which time the D30 caught my eye. I replaced by the D30 with a D60 when it came out, and just recently bought a 30D to replace the D60. I also now have Canon's 20mm prime and 28-120mm IS zoom lenses.

My Current Gear

Aside from the Canon EOS 30D, I have a Canon S400 (usually gets used for family functions), the Canon 20mm fixed, 28-105mm zoom, 28-135mm IS zoom, and 75-300mm zoom lenses, and the Canon Speedlite 420EX flash. I keep the cameras and all but the 28-105mm zoom (which doesn't get much use anymore) in an Adorama Slinger bag, IMHO the best bag for the serious amateur.

A Nikon Coolscan V allows me to scan my negatives and slides and gets loaned out occasionally as my family continues their conversion to digital photography. Aside from some software issues - Nikon's software is not the most user-friendly, and unfortunately the SANE drivers for Linux can't seem to scan, just get a preview image - I've been very happy with it and would recommend it to anyone that has a bunch of film they'd like to convert to digital. Otherwise, just get a commercial scanning service to do it for you...

Unfortunately, the Nikon doesn't support some of the older B&W film from my early years, so I still resort to scanning the prints on an old Canon 620U flatbed scanner. If anyone knows how to adapt the Coolscan to scan 110 and 126 film, please let me know!

Most of my photo work happens on Mac OS X with a 17" MacBook Pro laptop. I manage my photos primarily using my flPhoto software, although I've been playing with iPhoto, Aperture, and Lightroom recently.