Hello, I'm Jennifer and I just bought my first Canon which is also my first DSLR a few weeks ago. I'm used to compact/point & shoot cameras, so this is a big jump for me, but I'm really loving it. I'm a hobbyist and I've always enjoyed photography, even though I'm not sure if I'm any good at it. My first camera was a cute and girly Barbie camera that used film from the late 90's I got for my birthday one year when I was really little. I used more film than my parents. 
My first camera, an Asahi Pentax Spotmatic was purchased in Japan in 1969 (unfortunately stolen in 1980). This was followed immediately by an AE-1. I took a twenty or so year break from photography until August, 2016 when a T6i was purchased along with four lenses covering 10mm - 300mm. What a wonderful camera! Digital processing is an order of magnitude different from the old days when my brother had a complete b/w darkroom. My wife just bought a SX60HS which is another wonderful product.
My hero has always been Ansell Adams. I follow his "straight photography" concept out the window. Ninety percent of my photos are landscapes. Living in the foothills of the Colorado Rocky Mountains makes that an easy task. Deb and I just ordered a relatively high quality negative scanner so we can digitize our old film images. Now I can shoot b/w film with the AE-1 again. 
For me black and white photography is the ultimate form of the art.
