My Dad had a Pentax SLR that was always around. My Grandfather on my Mom's side had slides going back to, well, probably when they invented slide film. Taking and sharing photos was always just something we did. My Dad got a job at a company called Film Corporation of America (they didn't make film) and one of the perks was that he got free processing in their patented "Triple Print" format, which yielded a 3x5 and two mini-wallet photos from every shot. My brother and I had a 110 pocket camera that we shared and we took pictures of GI Joes, bikes, you name it. So many that I'm still spending hours going through them when I get to my Mom's place.
The art of photography didn't enter my world until my brother decided he wanted to be a "real photographer" in junior high. He's just a year younger and we shared a room, so as books and magazines started coming in I had them at my disposal. Music was the art that called me, but we sort of crossed into each others' worlds, with me taking concert photos with Dad's borrowed Pentax snuck into venues until I bought an FM with HS graduation money (my brother had moved on from his Pentax to a Nikon F - it was his chosen vocation and he's still at it, though a Canon Pro now). I took pictures all through college, but really only as snapshots and remembrances, not for photography sake. I never took a photography class (none offered at my college) and have never developed a roll of film, though I printed B&W with my brother back in high school.
When I got married, one of my wife's wedding presents was her own camera (her Dad also shot slides of everything all his life). We took pictures of trips and various events. Then, when the internet age came about and I started buying and selling musical stuff on the web I got tired of scanning prints or paying for digital copies when they got developed, so I shelled out for a Sony Mavica that could put 10-15 jpegs right on a floppy disc for me!! From there I went through 5 or 6 point and shoots over the course of the next 10 years. When I started traveling for work around 2004 I would take the digital camera along, and started really thinking about how I was shooting photos instead of just shooting photos. I got into editing them on the back end, turning snapshots into presentable photographs. I cataloged trips all over Colorado when I spent 16 months on a job there, and I started realizing that while I could take a good photo with the P&S, I couldn't do everything I wanted to with it.
We planned a 2 week 20th anniversary trip to CA, and I decided that a trip to Yosemite required that I take photos with a camera that would allow me to do the place justice. So, after months of legwork I eschewed the idea that I could borrow my brother's stuff and get a D7000 because from everything I read it was the best sensor at a consumer level available for the money. When my brother checked it out he agreed with me, so I felt somewhat vindicated even as he chuckled and said, "Look at all this glass you can't use!!" The rest, well, it's cataloged here.