About me:

For my 30th birthday I was given a SLR camera - a Canon EOS. I have always loved snapping photos and as a teenager my room was covered with photos.

When I got the camera I was so excited; it was what I had always wanted. I took it out of the box, attached the lens and then started snapping (in automatic of course).
Things were going fine, I took my camera on every trip I went on, spent days walking through Seville taking photos but I was missing a piece of the puzzle.

I had no idea what I was doing really. I was lost in a maze of F numbers and other strange numbers.
I absolutely hate instruction manuals and will go out of my way not to read them. So of course these F numbers etc., continued to be a mystery to me.

After a year and a half I found a photography course, close to my house and a good price. So I decided to sign up. Slowly, the mystery began to unravel itself and everything clicked into place (pardon the pun).

Photography:

Since the beginning of time, art and pictures have been a part of life. Cavemen (and women) decorated their dwellings with pictures highlighting aspects of their lives. Through the years, art has developed into different aspects and eventually in 1826 the first ever photograph was produced (thank you Mr. Joseph Nicéphore Niépce).  Since then, the techniques have evolved and incorporated new an innovative approaches to produce more exciting pieces of art.

The whole process can be define in a few ways (Wikipedia):

Photograph comes from the Greek words φωτός (photos), meaning "light", and γράφω (graphos), meaning "written".  

Photography is the practice of creating. A lens is used to focus the light reflected on the light-sensitive surface inside a camera during a timed exposure.

A photographer is a person who takes photographs. An amateur photographer takes photographs for pleasure and to record an event, emotion, place, or person.

And this is me, an amateur photographer who loves photographs and photography.