How or why did you get started in photography . . .

Ryan's recent thread, "What you wish you knew . . ." got me thinking . . . always a dangerous situation . . .

How did you get started in photography?  Go back to the beginning, I don't want to hear why you turned pro.  When did you first pick up a camera and what stopped you from putting it down?

Personnally, I got started when I was about 13 years old.  We had taken a trip to Disney World the year before and I was mesmerized by my father Polariod camera on that trip.  Sometime after we returned, he dug out his old Argus C3 and gave it to me.  I shot some slides and some color film, but I became really hooked when my grandfather gave me his old Federal enlarger and I started to learn to print my own B&W images.  It's sounds cliche, but once I saw one of my prints come up in the developer, I was finished!  It's still one of my favorite things in photography.

I have been in the darkroom off and on ever since.  I have taught darkroom classes for something near 50 or 60 students.  I still hear from some of them every once in a while.

Ed

I have answered this before, and perhaps on this forum, even.  And, I am afraid every time I answer it will be different because there are a lot of parts to the story, really.  In the interest of not making a long post I will tell the part about the very beginning this time.  It seems fitting because Ed said to not talk about what turned you pro.  So here you go:

My mom always had a lot of photography equipment.  She is interested in preserving old photographs and before scanners you took pictures of the pictures.  She had a really short tripod that goes on a table with two special non-glaring lights and the tripod makes it so you can get the camera perfectly aligned so it was shooting down to copy the old photographs.

Anyway, I grew up around that.  But the first picture I ever took was of my mom and dad.  They were going to this dance exhibition thing with costumes my mom made (she made the whole groups, if I remember correctly).  This, in and of itself, is odd enough to stand out in my memory, it's NOT like my parents at all.  Anyway, they stood posed in the kitchen right before they left and I took a picture of them.  My mom set the camera's settings and focused the lens and showed me what button to push.  That picture is still floating around somewhere, it's shot from an entirely too low angle (I was really little) and it's slightly soft and my dad looks handsome and my mom looks ravishing.

Years and years later for a Science Fair I used my mom's equipment, tabletop tripod thingy and all and took pictures of the components of commercial meat pies I dissected for my experiment.  In the state competition I won the Kodak Photography Award.  I got a gift certificate for quite a large amount to the Kodak store in Salt Lake City.  My parents and I took a trip to the big city and I bought film for the flouresant orange 35mm camera my cousin bought me for Christmas and took pictures with that huge amount of film for a long time.

There ya go, I wrote a novel anyway.

I think you need to post some of those photos!

 

Corey

When I was young, like around 5 or 6, I had a disc camera and carried it around all over the woods behind my house taking pictures. 

In 7th or 8th grade I took an intro photography course for an art credit.  Since we had to have our own SLR for the class I borrowed by dad's Canon FtbQL.  Sadly, or not I guess, I learned more photography from the hour or so my dad sat me down to show me how to use the camera than I did in a semester class.  The only thing I really remember from that class is to be sure you label your chemicals because there were 3 or 4 of us that had projects destroyed because the teacher had mislabeled bottles.   

In 9th grade my dad took me on a trip to the Grand Canyon and I shot 4 rolls of film over 3 days, what I thought was an obscene number at the time.  This was the first time I had ever used transparency film and got hooked.

Still have the disc camera

I like art, at the time, I was attracted to B/W. Nature was the other reason to be involved in photography.
I was 14 years old, took two years of photo journalism, I'm still in love with documentary photography, it's on the back burner, hoping to one day do it.
Been photographing since, I'm writing short sweet sentences, I'm in pain still.   

Missed this question the first time around. 

Probably just easier to see a picture.  This is pretty similar to the one I have.  Click it for a bigger image over at Wikipedia.