Photgraphy has been a serious hobby of mine for over 20 years. It started with a class in high school, then a few semesters in college, and so forth and so on. My favorite was always shooting black and whie and then developing myself. I'd love to have my own darkroom someday but finding a place for it is the hard part.

Now I shoot with either a Nikon N70 or a Nikon D100, usually the D100 since digital is so convenient. A while back I invested in some studio style flash units, mainly for taking pictures of my family but I've found they can be a lot of fun for other stuff as well since you can play around with different lighting techniques.

One thing I haven't seen anyone mention is using a close up lens for macro shots. By this I mean the filter type that you screw on to your existing lens. It's a cheap ($25-$50+) solution that works pretty well. The only problem is that it seriously reduces your depth of field.

Here's one of my favorite bud shots. For this pic I used the D100 with a 100-300 zoom( at 300) combined a x5 close up lens, tripod, 1/60, F22. For lighting I used an off camera flash unit set off to the side for kind of a dark side of the moon effect.