Occupaion: Stay-At-Home-Dad Interests: Family, High Altitude (Alpine) Plants and Growing Them, Art, Photography, Religions, Learning +++ Biography: My name is James Mikkelsen and I'm glad to have found this awesome forum and I love what I see. Really nice people and awesome photos. My photography background began with shooting film in the late 1980's with my Dad's 35mm Olympus. I took it with me on a field trip for one of my college courses and one of the stops was Devil's Tower in Wyoming. Addicted. I've been shooting digital since 2000 when I bought a Sony DSC-something with a whopping 2.1 Megapixels. Most of my photography after the Sony was with an HP Photosmart 850 (4Mg Pixels)and then a 945 (5Mg Pixels). I love these cameras because they have an 8X optical and 7X digital. I've shot over 20,000 images of vintage and antique toys and other items that I have sold on eBay since August 2001. That's currently what I still do with my main focus on marbles. So, one might think, "Wow, 25 years of photography experience. This guy must know a lot about the details of photography." NOPE. Through all the time, effort, software packages etc... I have never learned in detail the finer points of image formats, aperture, ISO, what "mm" means in a lens, etc, etc, etc... Essentially I took photos and if it looked good enough that was that. I suppose I really had no need or I was just to lazy to learn the details (yes, the latter applies). So, here I am with a Sony Alpha 55 SLT and I absolutely LOVE what this camera can do. If anyone else has a Sony Alpha, a worthwhile book to get is David Busch's Sony Alpha SLT-A55/A33 Digital Photography. It goes through every nook and cranny of the cameras. That's my photography biography. My biography would put you to sleep :) Website: not set