I've never blogged yet about one of the things that I love to do aside from reading, writing, taking care of virtual pets, and sketching. Maybe it's time I finally gave it a mention.

I got bitten by the shutterbug when I was still in high school and my favorite uncle gave me a Kodak Instamatic camera that used 126 film. It was the kind where the film still had to be manually advanced every time you took a photo.

I remember getting calluses on the pads of my thumbs from cranking the film with that little gear-like thing each time I finished taking a photo... if I didn't crank it far enough, I got double exposures. I carted that camera everywhere, using up a lot of my allowance on film and developing. Later, in college, I graduated to a camera that used 135 film and automatically advanced the film after each photo.

Film was a precious resource then, and I tried to make every shot count. A roll of 24-shot film would already account for 10% or more of my weekly allowance, not to mention the cost of having negatives made afterwards. If a roll had more than one extra frame on it (there usually was at least one, and if you were lucky, two or three), it was a cause of great joy... more photos!

With the advent of digital cameras, however, film fell into disuse, at least until Lomography became popular. Film and developing became burdensome expenses, more than ever, and I finally put aside my camera for other pursuits. The old shutterbug virus reanimates, however, when someone puts a camera into my hands, and I find myself click, click, clicking away once again.

Then, recently, a friend of mine posted a link to JPGMag.com. Seeing all those gorgeous photos posted on the site, and knowing that any of those photos could make it into the magazine, the shutterbug in me resurrected itself with a vengeance. I dug up all that I could find of the photos I had taken in the past using borrowed cameras, which I still carted around in my USB thumb drive like remnants of old junk I was loath to part with. And voila, the amateur photographer rose like a phoenix from the ashes.

I really must buy a good camera soon. For the meantime, I will go borrow someone else's camera and start click, click, clicking away again.

Photo 1. Kodak Instamatic camera that looks like my first camera. Original photo by Rommel Panganiban.