A couple of years ago, I developed a new hobby that I was pretty passionate about: photography.

I worked my way through a few cameras, until I settled on the Canon PowerShot G10 (which I still have and love).  It gave me enough compactness to bring with me everywhere but enough power to take some really cool shots (full disclosure: the picture above was taken on a PowerShot SX110, the camera I had before I settled on the G10).  For a while, during a tough time I was having with my depression, taking pictures helped me relax and find some peace.

I went through a few different phases. I keep my pictures on Flickr and would join Flickr groups which featured voting competitions. I won a number of first and second place awards in these groups, which made me feel good about my photography and gave me a sense that I had, perhaps, at least a modicum of talent. That aspect was fun for a while.

Eventually, as I was able to get a good portion of my depression under control, and I simply got busier in my work and personal life, photography fell by the way side. For months I wasn’t taking as many pictures as I would have liked, and quite simply I fell out of practice. As I often do to myself, I downplayed my photography and told myself that I was never really that good. I allowed my children to use my camera more and I went back to working on writing.

But lately, I’ve been having that itch again. Not because of a depression that is spiraling out of control, but just a desire to return to it, to explore what I found so satisfying about photography and reintegrate it into my life.

Quite simply, I started to miss it.

So I took my camera and decided to give it another try. Eventually, I may even post new pictures to Flickr. In the mean time, I’ll probably, on occasion, share some of my personal favorites here. The picture in this post is one of my best received ones, and I always had a fondness for it.  And please, I love hearing feedback- good or bad- about my photography, so don’t hesitate to drop me a line and give your thoughts.

So, are there any photographers out there? What kind of camera do you use and would you care to share any of your techniques?