Looking back through the digital images that remain on my Mac, I see that the first image is dated 16 September 2002. I did have a digital camera before that (1999 I think), but it and the images are long gone. I remember paying about £250 for a 1 megapixel point and shoot around this time.

But my photography goes back a long way before, and I have my father to thank for that. He was an amateur photographer (nothing serious, he sent his films away to Boots), but I used to get the old camera when he bought a new one. I remember getting a Brownie 127 when I was about 9, and taking pictures of Blenheim Palace with it on a school trip.

This would have been in the late fifties. It's interesting to think that photography as a means of expression had been around only just over 100 years at that time. Here's a picture my dad took of me and a friend, age 9, being bossed around by my grandad on the beach at Weston Super Mare.