I became involved in the world of photography purely by accident; Josh Freeman was the local hustler at foozball, one of the many parlor-room amusements that I've struggled to master for years, and coincidentally happened to be the photo editor for the Tartan at the time. He told me that there would be a recruitment meeting for the Tartan, and that there would be "free pizza". I'd already been planning to go, since I'd harbored dreams and ambitions of becoming a staffwriter, or perhaps even a columnist. The free pizza, however, was (as it always is) simply extra incentive.
I entered the Tartan photo staff with no knowledge of photography and a Minolta point-and-shoot viewfinder with a fixed 38mm lens. After several subtle suggestions that perhaps this wasn't an appropriately journalistic camera, I found myself using a fully-manual Nikon FA SLR. I had no idea what metering was, no idea what shutter speed or aperture did, and was still a bit fuzzy on the notion of ISO/ASA film ratings.
Fortunately, I knew how to focus.
My finest moment was (and perhaps still is) a nearly half-page front-page color shot of a young Japanese mother and her toddler carving Hallowe'en faces out of a brilliantly orange pumpkin. It was the first time I'd shot color for the paper, and was my first front-page shot. The feeling I got when I saw that shot in print has bound me to photography for the rest of my life.
I've since learned something about the science of the medium; how cameras work, the adjustments and compensations that need to be made for common "photo unfriendly" situations, and have even managed to log a few hours in the darkroom. I'm still learning about photography as an art, though, and I'm trying to train myself to notice and to observe, to find patterns in the mundane and focus my attention quickly on the spontaneous, to be able to treat the camera as a natural extension of my own eyes. It's something I'll be working on for a long, long time.