How or Why and When did you get into Photography?

I imagine this topic has been posted before. If not can we have a 2012 edition

As a kid every year I was taken to the Major Car show at Earls Court in London and admired both the cars and especially intrigued by the photographers and their equipment who were taking the photographs there at the time.

So not long after my 21st birthday, I passed my driving test and although my parents could not afford to buy me a car, my mother bought me a Zenit EM camera as a present for passing the test. A primitive camera by todays standards, but I learned a lot from using it and I still smile when I have seen one second hand in a camera shop or on display in a museum.

This was my first step into this little hobby and from all that time some thirty years ago, photography has always been there in my life.

Care to share your recollections?

My Dad bought me my first camera when I was six. Canon Canonet (sp?)

->THIS<- was the model of my first camera.

I remember my dad's Canonets and early EF film slrs laying around the house, as well as many types of polaroids. I guess the bug rubbed off on me from an early age, as he was always snapping away at us kids while we were growing up Wished he could have lived long enough for us to enjoy it together, I only started getting serious with it a couple years after he passed.

I got a little Fujifilm compact as a kid that felt like a serious bit of kit to me at the time and it took better pictures than the Kodak digital my parents were using so I just snapped away at pretty much anything. One day after night pictures didn't turn out so well, I took a look at the "advanced" section of the manual that came with it and experimented with various settings and things just clicked. That's where my story began.

My mother love taking photos when she was young, then she took lots of photos during my childhood for memories. That gave me the motivation to get into photography. From point and shoot to the big toys.

I bought a Nikon F in 1967, it was a babe magnet and i needed all the help I could get.

my neighbor was the chief photographer at the local paper and he always seemed to have better access to things around town. he grabbed a 4x5 graflex from the newsroom at the local newspaper when he was a type setter or editor or writer or something and ended up winning an AP award...

when i was in 6th grade (1976) i started shooting for the yearbook with a Canon EX-auto that belonged to the teacher sponsor. she let me take it home with me over the weekends if i was taking pictures of a basketball game or some other event on friday night...

did that for the 3 years in junior high and then played with a series of other cameras until MY first Canon an AE-1 in 1982 as my senior gift from my family...

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I'm a little more...recent haha. My brother's friend got a dslr for his birthday and when I saw some of the pictures he took with it, I was amazed. It was the first time that I saw 'professional quality' (to my untrained eye) photos taken by someone so close to me. I bought my first $350 dslr kit a few weeks later. I then moved from that Olympus to a rebel xs. After a few weeks I was better than the person who inspired me. From there I was hooked.

I build my first camera out of a shoe box and developed the film in my dad's darkroom.

I don't know... just liked playing with a PowerShot A610 (first digital camera at home, only had use of a fully automatic compact camera before - and not a lot due to costs) - then got a 400D and then a 5D MK II.... - just liked it I guess.

Up until now there have been 240 views of this thread and only 10 people posting which I find quite amazing, as everyone must have some kind of reason for getting into photography.

In my teens I studied at Print College for four years in my apprenticeship and one afternoon we also told to create a camera from a shoe box and even mixed the chemicals and coated our own glass negatives. After shooting an outside scene using this said camera, the negatives where developed and basic B+W prints made from them after a few attempts. It was certainly an eye opener.

I suppose because this was so back to basics at that time, it stuck with me!

Further on from my Zenit EM I progressed onto an Olympus OM10 and then my first real camera an A1 which was MA drive gripped with Tamron 70-210 (which I still have) and then for some reason a 620 which was my first step into AF. Nice camera (still have that too!).

I have become too attached to those old film cameras to sell them, they are like my pride of place as ornaments now on a shelf!

I discovered photography through a trip to Hong Kong in 2007. My parents bought me a Canon A640 from Fry's electronics and through this trip to HK, I instantly became addicted to this hobby.

I now have a T1i with an assortment of lens and gadgets...