I love my camera. It's a Minolta XG7- a manual SLR that is roughly 19-20 years old.

There was a time when I used to hate photography. I used to look down on it as a form of art, and had no real respect for photographers. I used to think that is was a "lazy way out" into the art world.. a "no-talent" hobby.

That all changed completely about a year ago (ok, it actually wasn't that long, it was like spring.. but I don't feel like doing the math), when I randomly decided to play around with a camera. I was stuck brooding over the days when I was younger and used to go off and hike in the woods as a kid whenever my family would go camping. When I was in around 3rd grade, I remember borrowing my dad's digital camera and taking some pictures in the woods- going as far as walking out onto a log off the bank of a forest stream to get a shot. I have no clue what ever happened to those pictures. I can't find the floppy they were saved on, and I think they were deleted permanently when my old comptuer died years ago. From there, I have no clue when or how I started to hate photography, but I am going to get on with my story of how I came to love it:

So anyway. I was thinking over my childhood days, and decided I needed a bit of nostalgia. My mom took my sisters and I to one of the parks in our town, and that alone had finally put me back into my element. Nature has always fascinated me, let me tell you. I'm obsessed with the sheer beauty of it all, of the energy, and of the will to thrive and survive. I borrowed my mom's 35mm camera and started snapping a few pictures of trees, leaves, and anything else I could get an aim at. When we got the pictures developed, I was looking them over, and.. I don't know.. it was just love.

That's when I began to experiment more with the camera. Mom had an old Minolta XG-A in her closet, so she gave it to me to experiment with. That was the first time I had my hands on a manual SLR, and I immediately fell in love with it. That began a learning process of trial and error- teaching myself how to focus, set aperature and exposure, and even scarier: how to actually load and rewind my own film. x]

I took the XG-A to Vegas with me on vacation, which is quite unfortunately when and where it broke. The power switch, to be exact. Fortunately, we found a camera shop not far from our hotel, and that's where I got my XG-7, and my first telephoto lens. The rest of the week, I went through 7 rolls of film (sadly, lost the roll of pictures from the Hoover Dam... I have a sneaking suspicion it fell off the "dam" wall when I was organizing my camera bag). I also learned a great deal about exposure from the Vegas rolls... I lost several pictures to over-exposure.. .damn desert sun.

For a few months, the XG-7 was sitting in my closet, as I was so busy, I didn't have much time to work with it. I did, tonight, take it out again finally. There was a little possum sitting on my fence outside (in the dark... rawr). Mom took a picture of it with her digital camera, and I, feeling the slight urge to (hopefully) show her camera up, ran outside with my XG-7, and it's zoom lens and flash. I managed to finish the roll of film I had with about 6 shots of Mr. Possum. I'm really curious to see if they're going to come out. There's no light on that side of the house, so I am relying entirely on my flash. One thing I did learn however: It's incredibly hard to focus in the dark! Whenever I get this roll developed, I'll post an update on whether el possum came out or not.

For now... I'm attempting to wrestle a fresh roll of film from mom. I think I'm going to bring my XG-7 to school and take some tech photos in the auditorium... well, maybe next week when things are calmed down. I don't want my baby to get damaged.

And that is the story of how I came to love photography.