Before I owned my Canon 20D digital SLR (single-lens reflex) camera, I actually used to shoot with a great Canon A-1 film camera that my dad bought decades ago. It was the camera that taught me all the foundations of photography (f-stops, shutter speeds, ASA/ISO selections, depth-of-field, etc.) and it was also the camera that I made my biggest mistakes on (opening the film cover half-way through a roll, setting the wrong ISO so the entire roll was over/under-exposed, not loading film, forgetting to change the battery, etc.).

Though my first passion was black and white photography (I *loved* developing my own negatives and spending hours in the dark room burning and dodging for the perfect print), I started to shoot Velvia slide film right before I switched to a digital SLR. Actually, it was the beauty and saturation of the slide film that propelled me to finally get a digital SLR; I hated having these great slides and not being able to easily share them with my friends and family. I also hated taking both my film SLR (for quality) and my point-and-shoot digital camera (for convenience) on all my trips; lugging around two (not small) cameras was the epitome of inconvenience.

The last big trip I took my film camera on was Alaska; a couple friends and I backcountried through Denali and went down to Seward for a tour of the Aialik Glacier. It was a phenomenal trip. In case you’re wondering, the third image is of the Denali summit catching the last rays of sun.