Chevy Shadow, originally uploaded by neocles.

It is sort of odd. I have always been interested in photography, and used to shoot with an old Canon FTb back before going away to grad school. I used to shoot mostly slide film for my little multi-media pieces for which I also composed weird electronic music. But somehow the passion did not come back after I finished school. Even after working at a photo lab for the last several years now, I didn’t really go beyond the usual point-n-shoot photo ops.

Then last year the passion came back strong. I have been having a blast, first with my Nikon D40x, and then also with a Diana+ and a Holga. Now I am obsessed. I almost always have a camera of some sort with me. In fact, THAT is about the only way for me to really take pictures because there is rarely, uh never, time enough in my week to go out on a dedicated shoot. So, if I’m gonna shoot, it is gonna be while I’m commuting, eating, working, etc.

Of course, Flickr has had a big role in feeding the obsession as well. The way this occurred was made much clearer to me last night while attending a BayCHI meeting where the topic of one of the talks was how to effectively build elements of game-playing into social network Web sites. (More on the BayCHI talk later.)

None of this is to say that I have been particularly successful at the “gaming”, or advanced my photography skills very quickly. Nonetheless, I still pretty damn excited about taking pictures, so here is the first of many photo posts to come.