My first introduction to the world of photography was in Oct 2008, up until then I had no interest in photography and never touched a camera before in my life.

When I finally brought my first camera with a kit lens (Canon 40D), I had no idea what ISO, Shutter Speed or Aperture were, but lucky for me, my best friend Annie was a photographer and she gave me four bits of advice.

• Framing, framing, framining, and the importance of it.
• Never touch that damn AUTO button. Make a habit of doing everything Manual (I you wanna learn!)
• Make sure your Exposure pointer is right in the middle (to start with).
• Try and look at things differently, everyone can take a photo but your's have to be different and more interesting.

These are some of my early photos, and just like everyone else I smile and cringe every time I look at them, bad as they were, they represent some of the happiest moments in my life and I figured they deserve a second chance. So sitting at home nursing my tonsils I decided to seek photoshop's help to bring some much needed level of interest back into these otherwise tourist snaps.

It's not the kind of work one would normally post on Behance, and the purpose of this excersise is not to display my skills, heck I didn't have any when I took these photos, infect its quite the opposite. If it helps some young start-up photographer then its only a good thing. I'm not an expert yet, still struggle and kick myself often, but that's OK, it's all part of a learning process and there's always so much more to learn. So don't be disheartened when you make a mistake, try to figure out where you went wrong and how you could've done it better.

In my opinion, inspiration is more important then anything else, so try and get yourself an Annie if you can, watch her work and listen to her (even if it all doesn't make much sense in the beginning), she'll inspire you to do better and try to look at things differently, it's the best way to learn. Rest is just technical mumbo-jumbo, anyone can learn that.