I had a small Agfa camera when I was growing up. I'm not sure where it came from, but once I started playing with it, I was hooked. The camera was difficult to load and wind, but that didn't stop me from trying to document my childhood. I loved taking pictures – the fact that they were out-of-focus, over- or under-exposed, and/or poorly composed (due to the camera's goofy viewfinder and my pre-pubescent aesthetic) didn't bother me at all.

Later, I “appropriated” Dad's Pentax and began exploring the many mysteries of 35mm SLR cameras. Shutter speed, aperture, focus – everything had to be set manually. Learning by trial and error was a slow (and expensive) process, since the time between shutter release and print was about a week back then. Those little yellow Kodachrome mailers took even longer, but the added anticipation only made me more excited when the slides finally arrived.