eeeeej colleague!!
what a coincidence! you know.... we understand eachother!

well...right now I have a lowbudget nikon f55 with a 28-80 and 75-300 ...
I work in a photostore and I played around with a canon with a macro lens and you can do real cool stuff with it! It's a totally different world looking trough such a closeup lens! I didn't made any pics with it yet but do you have some samples ? I'll pm you my email incase you have some...
as Im a student I just started really photograph with an real camera so I don't have a good portofolio right now but Im working on it...

to tell you the truth....
last year I was able to choose between 3dschool or photographschool.... I choose photgrapicschool over the 3dschool because I didn't knew much (back than) about 3d in general... Looking back I know I did the right thing! I just love to make photo's and I really think you need to practice for it in real live and with the 3d I can make my own school at home at my own time...
It's probably a slow progress but I put my motivation and inpiration from sm and sofar so gooood!
My plan is to just learn as much as I can at home with 3d till I got my photograpicschool done... and than it will be time to traval around the world baby!!
I'll come visit you!
actually.... where are you from ?