"I'm in awe of your photos - tell me about your camera"

That was a quote from an email I received recently. I appreciate the feedback, but I wonder if she was really just complimenting my camera!

I learned how to take pictures on one of those fully manual cameras that you change the lenses on (SLR, or single lens reflex). I was in college when digital cameras were first released. During that time, I was intensely focused on my photography classes, spending countless hours in the darkroom and really honing my skills. When my peers and I first heard about digital cameras, we swore we'd never replace our film cameras with a digital camera. (If you think that was hoity-toity, you should have met the art school students - now THOSE were some prize winners!)

It took many years and a few key observations to realize that I had the wrong perspective. One of the first things that shook me out of my ivory tower was seeing my mom's vacation photos. Despite my insistence that she get a "real" camera, she always took disposable cameras with her and, to my surprise, kept coming back with compelling photos. Then I started noticing all of my friends were buying digital cameras and having a great time taking photos with them. I finally came to the realization that disposable cameras and digital cameras have created a situation where more people are taking more photos, and that's definitely a good thing. If I shoot a roll of 24 pictures, I'm lucky if I get 2 photos that I really like, so I understand that in some ways, this is a numbers game. The more photos you create, the more great photos you'll end up with, no matter what you're shooting with.

The latest incarnation of cameras is cameraphones, and I admit that I poo-pooed them the same way that I poo-pooed digital cameras in the 90's. So it's ironic that my favorite recent photo was taken with a cameraphone. It's a picture of a ghost child that was taken the day before I arrived at the famous Baker Hotel to shoot a TV pilot. In the end, cameras are just tools, it's what you do with them that matters.