I became interested in photography at the ripe age of 8. While standing in line at the grocery store with my mom, I spotted a calendar with beautiful images from hillside and seascape locales. I was amazed at the beauty of the scenery, and talent that captured the beautiful scenes with such stunning colors. After beggin for, and getting the calendar, my grandmother presented me with a plastic 35mm camera, the type you get when you buy a case of mail-order makeup.
As I grew into adulthood, I bought a Pentax manual focal MG, a Minolta manual focus, then to EOS Canon bodies and lenses, starting with an EOS Rebel, Rebel G, EOS Elan IIE, then graduated to the Bronica 645 medium format system. Although I still shoot medium format for some clients (I LOVE the UC film from Kodak), I shoot most work digitally now. I've used the Olympus E10, Canon D30's, D60's, 10D's, 20D's and 30D's and 1D.
I once had an assistant who asked me "how long does it take to learn everything about photography"?. I laughed for awhile before answering, "you never learn it all".