My background is black and white film photography. I'm used to making photograms in the wet darkroom, but I'm fairly new to scanner art. I happen to be someone who's always loved abstract and graphic arts, the placement of forms, negative space, and creating compositions with tension. In black and white scans, luminosity and quality of tonal values are just as important to me as content.
I love the immediacy and purely unsubjective raw reality of the way the scanner sees the world. There's depth of field to play with as well.
I feel very passionate about both photography and this new art form, and I like to arrange the compositions until the inner aesthetic barometer tells me that things are "right" --- I'm always after this sense of rightness and I don't know it 'til I see it. The scanner also opens up many possibilities of working with motion. Photography's portrayal of motion is totally unique (as opposed to painting, for example), and scanner motion is a new extension of this dynamic.
When you are feeling stale in your art process, or taking it all too seriously, I recommend taking a "scanner break". It gives immediate gratification and lets your creative impules take flight.