When I was 10-years old, my parents bought me dozens of rolls of 127 roll film, a decent camera, and everything needed to develop and print black & white film. Even at that age, I connected with taking and making images of the people and world around me at a very visceral level.
I got a Canon Demi half-frame camera in eighth grade and started a long love affair with 35mm film. Moved up to a Canonflex RM SLR with a 50mm f1.8 lens at age 14; and for my 16th birthday, my parents gave me a Canon F-1 - a beautiful machine that I still have today, and which still works perfectly.
In between my first photos and now, I've shot everything from 8x10, 5x7 and 4x5 view cameras to minox B and C spy cameras along with almost every film format in between. I've shot Leicas, Nikons, Nikkormats, Minoltas, Besselers, Bronicas, Mamiyas, Rolleiflexes, Hasselblads, Rapid Omegas, Kodaks, Olympuses, Honeywell Pentaxes, Agfas, Anscos, Panasonic Lumixes, Fujis, Keystones, Richoflexes, Yashicas, Sonys, Bell & Howells and Polaroids; I've shot straight 8, super 8 and 16mm movie film cameras and even owned a Canon Scoopic 16mm film camera for a time.
In my film days I shot a lot of black and white and never let anyone develop or print any of it...only me; I hated the idea that someone else would decide how the final image might look. When I moved to color, I shot transparency film, and Kodachrome - especially Kodachrome 25 - was my favorite; it was so beautifully saturated and rich. The big advantage to shooting transparencies (or 'slides') is that, barring potential problems in the automated processing step, no one could change the framing or character of the image I captured. The big disadvantage to shooting transparencies is that you need to always be mindful of everything in the frame, because there isn't an easy way to crop and re-balance the image...I learned life-long lessons about mindfulness and composition from using that medium for a lot of years.
During college, the light meter on my F-1 stopped working. I didn't have the money to get it fixed, so instead I just shot by feel; by looking at the light and thinking about how much and what kind of light the film would need to give me the shot I wanted. Not that I didn't blow some shots now and then, but over the two years I shot meterless (and of course with manual focus, because that's just the way things were), I developed (pun intended) a real physical feel for light and how it affected the film in my camera.
I shoot mostly digital now (RAW only) although I still shoot film for fun and for the feel of it sometimes (I still develop my own B&W). My primary cameras for general use are a Canon EOS R5 and a Canon EOS 5D MkIV. For film, I have a Canon F-1, Canon AE1, Canon Pellix, Canon FTb, Canon EOS3, Canon EOS A2E, Canon Rebel, Honeywell Pentax H1, and Nikon FM (all 35mm film); a Mamiya C330 (120/220 roll film, with 80mm f2.8 and 180mm-Super f4.5 lenses); and a Graflex Crown Graphic (2-1/4x3-1/4 sheet film). My lens kit includes Canon EF 8-15mm f4 L fisheye, Sigma 14mm f1.8 Art, Canon EF 11-24 f4 L, Canon EF 16-35mm f4L IS, Canon RF 35mm f1.8 STM macro, Canon EF 40mm f2.8 STM, Canon RF 24-105mm f4L IS, Canon EF 50mm f1.4, Canon EF 65mm MP-E f2.8 1-5X Macro, Canon RF 100mm f2.8 L Macro, Canon EF 180mm f3.5L Macro, Canon RF 70-200mm f4 L, Canon RF 100-500mm f4.5-7.1 IS, along with Canon RF 1.4x extender and set of Canon extension tubes. There are others, but those are the ones I use most. I have two Canon 600ex RT II flashes, one Canon 580ex, MT24EX, two 430ex flashes, one 430 ex II flash, a Canon ST-E3-RT Speedlite Transmitter, two Phottix Lasso flash receivers, and a pair of Nanlite Lumipad 25 LED lighting panels (along with a bunch of umbrellas, soft boxes, backgrounds and stands for various setups) and use Manfrotto, Feisol, and Gitzo tripods and heads mostly; a WeMacro Automated Focus Rail and a Manfrotto 454 Micrometric Focus Rail for tight macro stacking (I use Helicon Remote and Helicon Focus s/w for managing and rendering the stacked images; but sometimes I'll render a stack in Photoshop CC). I have an AquaTech underwater housing with several lens ports for my 5DIV. I have a Pluto Trigger, a DJI Mavic Mini Pro 3 drone, and a Yuneec Typhoon Q500 drone. I scan my film images to TIFF format at 3200 dpi using an Epson Perfection V600 Photo scanner (or have the custom lab do the same). I use Adobe Photoshop Lightroom (since the pre-release beta) for import, organization, cataloging, tagging, geotagging and all post-shoot workflow.
I've shot photographs on all seven continents in 42 countries, 50 US states (plus DC, Guam and Midway), six Canadian provinces and lots of weird, hard-to-get places (like in the Arctic ice pack, the Aleutian Islands and crossing the Drake Passage). There's beauty and unrepeatable moments to be captured everywhere and sometimes there is no photo that could possibly capture the beauty of the moment.
Photography is the way I remember life. Photography centers me and forces me to look at the world in small, detailed rectangles of form, motion, balance, light and dark. Photography makes me happy...and it's a tremendous side benefit that others enjoy my work.