I have so many hobbies that I will never be bored. Besides gaming, there's my needlework projects, singing, reading, roaming the woods, and photography. Of them all, I think that photography may give me the most satisfaction.
I've loved looking at photos ever since I can remember. My grandmother's photo albums kept me occupied for hours, as did the gorgeous photos in the National Geographic magazines she subscribed to. Later on, I was introduced to the amazing black and white landscapes of Ansel Adams and Galen Rowell's gorgeous photos of the Himalayas. I got to meet Galen Rowell when he came and did a presentation of his photos at my college, I think he might have been promoting his book Mountain Light at the time. I got the chance to talk to him a bit, and I'm glad I did, as he died in a plane crash in 2002.
I was given my first camera when I was seven. It was a beat-up instamatic that took 110 film, and I think my mom got it at a yard sale. My first roll of film was mostly the neighborhood dogs, my mom and my baby sister, and several shots of clouds. I still have the pics in a photo album. Later on, I was given an antique Brownie, and that was my camera of choice growing up until I got my first point-and-shoot 35 mm, an Olympus XA2 . Well, actually it was my parents, but I had it on very long term loan. Eventually I gave it back to them and my dad bought me one of my own, another Olympus, which had more bells and whistles, but I thnk the XA2 was the better camera. The issue with film cameras was getting the film developed, and I think I stll have several rolls of exposed film that I never did get developed.
My friend Micca was visiting from England and I took him to the park I worked at and he was shocked to discover that I didn't have a digital camera. A couple of months after he went back to England, I got a couple of packages from Amazon. In them was a camera and a bunch of accessories to go with it. That Panasonic Lumix is a great camera and opened up a word of possibilties for me. It's the camera that I take most of my photos with. When Micca upgraded to a newer, fancier DSLR, he gave me his old Canon and bought me a zoom lens. I have to admit to being kind of intimidated by all the buttons and dials, but I'm slowly learning how to use it. Maybe I'll take a class through community ed one of these days.
Anyway, that's one of my other hobbies. What do you other than game in your leisure time?
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