As anyone watching me has probably noticed, I'm not the journal-writing type.  

I just never felt like I had anything to say.

I just take pictures.

And what little free time I have is spent doing just that, or editing them, and not writing about them.

And the funny thing is, I don't even know why I do it. And I don't know why I can't stop doing it either.

The thing is, I wasn't always a photographer. Prior to mid 2008, I had almost no interest in photography.  

I had always had an interest and drawing and sculpting, and also painting and to a lesser extent, poetry (though I have to confess, I'm a terrible poet.).  

But photography never really caught on.  

When I was teenager I was briefly interested in photography and I tried to get into wildlife photography. I lived in British Columbia, Canada, so I guess it was natural. Anyway, I was trying to photograph one of my many pets (a pet lizard...'wildlife', honest!) with a Carl Zeiss Macro (I think it was a 100mm f2.8...but I might have it wrong...it was a long time ago)  and I managed to drop the camera and damage the lens. The lens belonged to my father and it look my entire life savings to pay him back (not that much money, but then, I was only 16). And that was the end of photography for me.  

Paint brushes don't break when you drop them.  

Sculptures do, but that's another story.  

And then for years and years I had absolutely no interest in photography as an art form. I still had my old Contax 139 but I almost never, ever used it. And I didn't own a digital camera of my own until 2009.  

What happened? I really don't know.  

I was wandering around in Munich one August in 2008 (yes, I am aware that 2008 only had one August in it) and I was the artist’s district. At least someone told me that's what it was. I liked how the light looked on some of the buildings and I decided to borrow a digital camera from someone and take some pictures.  

I took my pictures and I loaded them up into my computer and played with them a bit in PS.  

I then I decided to take more pictures....and more...and I ended up thinking it was cool to make faux IR pictures and neat looking shots of local parks and then Photoshop the hell out of them....but something stuck and I just kept shooting.  

I wondered when I would get bored with it and move on...as so often happened with many of my various 'passions' over the years.  

But I didn't get bored, and I kept taking pictures.   

And then I got my own digital SLR. I thought it was really cool and I shot the hell out of it.  

Then someone showed me a Leica M and it was love at first sight and I've been shooting with an M4 (and now an M4-P) ever since...on film.  

And what the hell happened?  

How do you go from no interest at all in photography to being avid – if amateur – photographer?

I don't know. And I was wondering about it today and since I never write journals, I thought I'd write it down.

I hope no one fell asleep while reading this.   

And in case you did, here's some awesome work by other artists which will probably wake you up again: