Sometime around 1984 I got my first SLR camera – a Canon AE-1 Program. My brother was doing photography in high school and I wanted to be just like him. I learned some basic darkroom technique that as well. I wish I could remember the lenses that I had with that camera, but it was something like a 50mm prime and a 70-200mm zoom.

I used that gear all through middle school and high school, eventually taking sports photos for the high school paper.

And then, I just sort of put it away.

A few years after I got married my wife called me from camera shop and asked the simple question, “Can I trade in your camera gear?” I figured that I trusted her enough to say I spend the rest of my life with her so I guess I can trust her with this. She traded my stuff away and on Christmas morning that year I opened up a Canon Rebel Xs with a 35-80mm 4-5.6 III lens and a Promaster 80-210mm 4-5.6 lens. All autofocus – so she could use it.

I kept that camera until May of 2007. It didn’t get much use.

Shortly after my son was born in 2001, we took the digital camera plunge. The first one was a Toshiba PDR series camera. I can’t recall the exact model, but we thought it was awesome….for a while. Really, it was clunky, slow and had terrible white balance.

Just around the time my daughter was born, two years later, I upgraded to a Canon A95. What a great camera that was, and still is. The kids use it today. It’s a camera with nice manual controls, pretty good timing, and easy to carry around.

The more I played with the A95, the more I realized that I missed what a good SLR camera had to offer.

Eventually I bought a Canon Digital Rebel XT, and Ebayed away my AE-1 body.  The XT has now given way to a Canon 5D Mark II.

All images are copyright Paul Lender and Left of Center Photography.

All images are for available for purchase.

Contact paullender@gmail.com for details.