I've been a photographer for more years than I can actually remember. In the days of film, I was never particularly good or even enthusiastic, but it was always on the fringes of my interest for recording special events and holidays. I always loved the technology and owned a couple of good quality camera bodies, but my skills lay dormant for a long time.
That all changed with the birth of digital photography, a point at which I could bring together my passion for computers and creativity. I do know, for certain, the day that I shot my first digital image. I had been on a business trip to New Jersey, and the duty-free shop at Manchester airport had an offer on a little Fuji digital camera, 3.3 megapixels as I recall, so I jumped into this new world of photography. I passed several hours of the flight reading the instruction manual and was ready to go. As I disembarked the plane on December 12th, 2000, walking up the airbridge at Newark International, I took my first digital image looking across the Hudson River at Manhattan and the twin towers.
My First Digital Photograph - December 12th 2000
That's a little over 20 years of digital photography, which started as a curiosity, became a passion, and transformed into an obsession. During that time I have drifted between styles and subject matter, trying to get better at each one until I found another area of interest. Throughout this time I also developed my skills with Photoshop and other photo editing packages, which I have used to enhance my images.
With the advent of movie recording in digital cameras I have recently been drawn into the world of cinematography too; another area of interest to get my teeth into.
Photography has given me a lot of joy down the years and I expect it to continue that way for as long as I can hold a camera.