I made models with clay from the time I was ten years old and also built plastic models of movie monsters like Frankenstien, Godzilla and many others. This was in the early and mid 1960s. I grew up in the Norfolk/Virginia Beach area.
Starting in the late 1960s I became interested in photography. I used an old black and white Polaroid and later an Instamatic camera. After moving to Arizona in the mid 1970s, I purchased my first SLR camera with interchangeable lenses, a Pentax K1000. In Phoenix I took classes and learned to develop and print my own Black and White photos rather than have a lab do them. Later I learned to develop E6 Process color slide film.
In 1980 I got an Intellivision video game console for Christmas. I had it for about two weeks and sold it. I wanted to make stuff on the screen, not play games. I was intrigued by the concept of creating with light itself. After some research I settled for an Atari 400 8-bit personal computer.
At first there was no software to speak of. And storage was limited to a tape cassette drive (just like an audio player). But it came with a BASIC cartridge, so I learned BASIC and was able to program shapes and moving patterns on the screen.
Within a year or two some crude (by today's standards) paint programs and even some rudimentary 2D animation software became available. 
After getting an Apple II computer for my business (there was no business software for the Atari) I had to set aside my CG hobby for a while while I immersed myself in creating spreadsheets and the like. When the 16bit Atari machines came out, I was tempted to buy one but software was limited. 
In various computer magazines I began to see ads for 3D graphics software, and in 1988 I bought my first of three Amiga computers. I bought Silver, a 3D modeling, rendering and animation program from Impulse, inc. That program evolved into Imagine. I used it extensively and still do. Imagine migrated to the PC after the Amiga faded away and I migrated as well. In 1997 Impulse's metablob modeler Organica became available. 
I still use these two programs extensively, and I use Adobe Photoshop CS5 Extended (with it's 3D capability) to enhance my renderings. Everything you see on my image pages was done with these programs.