**Once upon a time... Oops, no! Wrong story.**

I mostly remember a time when the word **“camera”**, without needing to add “film” in front of it, referred to a diabolical device that devoured film in rolls of 24 or 36 exposures.

During a school trip to the United Kingdom in the 1980s, armed with a splendid Kodak Instamatic, I produced a magnificent photographic series of London: two rolls of 24 beautifully blurry photographs.

At the time, I became convinced that photography simply wasn't for me, and I spent many peaceful years with absolutely no desire to write with light.

It wasn't the wonders of digital photography that eventually brought me back to this forgotten path, but my diabolical wife, who one day had the brilliant idea of buying, at a bargain price, a marvellous electronic gadget designed to preserve all those perfectly useless moments of our ordinary lives.

I fell straight into the trap: all those little buttons, seductive dials and mysterious settings. Little by little, I invested in enough equipment to pass for a photographer in the eyes of the uninitiated.

Naturally, I quickly realised that mastering this apparently simple new field would soon reveal me as the next great photographic genius. Nothing less. Becoming merely a star or a superstar was obviously reserved for those who happened to be lucky.

So I promptly joined photography forums and critique websites, where I fully expected my genius to receive the recognition it deserved.

Having grown up believing that **“I love it when a plan comes together,”** I was somewhat disappointed to discover that things didn't quite go according to plan.

My ego took some massive shots **no pun intended** and at the time I probably convinced myself that the other participants were simply jealous of my extraordinary talent.

Time eventually taught me that they were right: what I was producing really wasn't very good.

Since then, I've been taking photographs simply for my own enjoyment, still very much an amateur, still trying to make images that I find beautiful.

In 2024, I set myself a simple challenge: to practise photography every day and post one photograph of something beautiful I encountered along the way.

And, as always, if you enjoy any of my photographs, my story, or simply anything you find here, feel free to leave a comment.