QUESTION
For Mike Malin: What made you decide to work with cameras? Did
you have backround experience or work with cameras as a child? 

ANSWER from Mike Malin on November 28, 1996:
When I was a kid, I was fascinated everything about space, but 
especially by pictures taken from space of the Earth and Moon. I 
remember vividly setting my alarm clock and waking up very early in 
the morning to watch live television pictures from the Ranger 
spacecraft as they crashed into the Moon. It was like BEING THERE! 
When I went to college, I studied various fields of science, but found 
myself most interested in geology, and in looking at pictures to tell 
what happened on other planets. I saw scientists from the California 
Institute of Technology on TV talking about the pictures of Mars, and 
I thought they had a great job. I applied to Caltech, and did my Ph.D. 
work under those men, and that's what led to my present work.

I had cameras as a child, but didn't become serious about 
photography until I started my graduate work at Caltech. My mother 
traveled to Japan on vacation and I gave her money to buy me a Nikon 
(a "professional" camera) and I have used it ever since (25 years!). I 
like photography, but I'm not very good at it. Along the way I have 
had to use my camera mostly to document my work, so it is mostly 
pretty boring stuff.