I’ve been messing around with photo-taking since my muse was my cat named Pebbles and my medium was this Fisher Price/Kodak teal camera:

Little shutterbug gear, circa 1991

I gradually grew into more sophisticated film cameras and became the family photographer. I made countless photo albums and kept Walmart’s one-hour processing center in business. I averaged about a roll a film a week all the way through high school. (Why did I always get doubles? What a waste.) My senior year, I went halvsies with my dad and purchased a Sony digital camera. I wasn’t very tech-savvy and I barely knew how to work my laptop but I devoured that camera booklet and suddenly, I could review photos and not have to carry spare film with me everywhere I went.

Major upgrade

That old Cyber-shot carried me through my formative freshman year of college. My external hard drive and creepy organizational skills tell me I took over two thousand photos that year. I partly blame my nagging need to document everything but Facebook definitely played a major role in this explosive habit. The ability to upload a Facebook album, with 60 photos, began in October 2005. I quickly produced an album filled with Halloween photos and then there was no stopping me. Facebook sent me an email when I reached 10 full albums (600 photos, for those counting at home) and warned me that I “was using too much bandwidth” and I would not be able to upload until their servers caught up. I was banned from uploading for a few painful weeks. (By the way, if Facebook emails you and tells you to stop taking photos, you know you have a problem.)

Now I have 211 albums. Get on my level Facebook.

Pretty soon, Facebook caught up with me and before I knew it, I had 100 Facebook albums. I took this badge of honor so seriously that I made a “greatest hits” album and re-posted my favorite 60 photos over the past three years. Just re-reading that sentence makes me feel a mix of shame and pride.

My 100th Facebook Album - June 2008

The old Cyber-shot was eventually replaced with a new but actually quite the same Cyber-shot. Things only got worse when I went abroad and became the American who couldn’t touch a meal without photographing it first.

Then, sometime after I graduated my photo-taking began to err on the side of quality instead of quantity. My albums were less frequent but contained more thoughtful shots. I was taking more and more photos of sober people! This Christmas I decided enough was enough. I’d been messing around with photography for 20+ years and all my friends and family are producing adorable babies who must be captured constantly. It was time to get real. (Plus, I had just broke my Samsung DualView camera and I was a little heartbroken.)

As if coming full-circle, the rents pitched in and I got this shiny new Sony NEX-5 DSLR camera that I am in love with:

New kid on the block

OK. I’m a little scared to use it. It’s intimidating. And expensive – even though it has a better insurance policy than my car, I feel like it’s going to fall on the floor and disappear all at the same time. But I’ll learn this camera just like I learned my first one: studying that damn book. And this time I have the internet and lots of helpful photog-loving friends. I’m going continue to blaze a path down quality vs. quantity….although, this memory card is very large…a few extra Facebook albums never hurt anyone, right?