Back in 2018 I was taking yearly headshots for a  dance studio’s regional ballet company. I was really just starting with my what would become my professional photography journey - something that’s evolved since sometime while I was in grade school and got my hands on a discarded 110 film camera someone found, leading to a 35mm Kodak camera I got from saving points with canned food labels or cereal boxes or something like that. I thought it was the coolest thing ever! My very own 35mm camera! It was as bare bones as you could get - pretty much a pinhole camera that was made of plastic and had a piece of glass over the hole. No focal capabilities, no flash, no settings. Just load film, shoot, hope it’s bright enough the exposure will develop, and manually advance the film. I loved that thing!

I think I’ve always had a good eye for photography, whether I knew it or not. I loved snapping pictures on vacation, at the zoo, or wherever I felt like buying 24 exposures plus developing costs was worth it! This was the '80s, when minimum wage was $3.35 and one had to choose wisely when it came to spending that income.

In 1990 while I was in college, I took a trip to Europe for a few weeks and of course I took my camera with me-  still the Kodak 35mm at that point. The guy I was dating at the time commented on how he liked a picture I took of the Strasbourg Cathedral. He liked the way the gigantic church looked behind the little buildings in front of it. I was so happy he liked it, I had an enlarged print made and framed it as a gift to him for his birthday, maybe Christmas, I can’t remember - I digress. This, however, was the first time I ever thought I took a good picture!

In 1995 I graduated from college and moved to California. Sometime after that and adopting two cats, I saved my money and bought my first "good” camera. A Canon Sureshot Z85 that I still have laying around her somewhere. It was 35mm, had a really nice focal range for close ups (of my cats), and it was everything I ever dreamed of in a camera at that time. I’m 99.9% sure I ordered it from the Service Merchandise catalog!  I think at this time I started my love of Canon. It wasn’t love all the time, but it’s ultimately become my camera brand of choice. More on at some other time…

Next up: My first digital camera!