I come from a long line of photographers, at least about as long a line as one can have in the field of photography. I've been immersed in many aspects of photography since day one.

I would accompany my Dad to shoots as a very young child. I started changing film for him and printing pictures at age five. When I was eight years old I asked for a "real" camera for my birthday.

I received a great one, a Pentax K1000 35mm camera and a 50mm F2.0 lens. I had a decent understanding of exposure, metering light, and how to focus. I got better quickly.

I have always been an experimenter and thus started playing with compositions and lighting. My Dad taught me one of the great lessons of photography at that age. "Make every shot count" a lesson especially vivid for film shooters.

Nonetheless making the frames count is a good thing for all of us to do. They don't all have to be great, but at least we should learn and improve from the frames we don't like as much.

Technology is changing the way we capture and make images, but the things that make an image great for the viewer haven't changed at all. There's never been a better time to be a photographer creating art.