My photographic journey is quite long (everything is relative - right?). First camera that I used consciously was an Russian Zenith (I was around 15 at this time). Earlier there were only accidents when I occasionally used my father's camera and I produced something interesting like this...
[Cracow ~1991]
...but generally It was just something that was happening rarely - negative film was quite expensive and as a child I wasn't permitted to play with it.
Continuing on conscious effort - pictures were pretty bad, with small exceptions. I would say, results where I was trying were much worse than the other way around.
Without darkroom and knowing what exactly is happening (how to properly expose) I was fairly blind, looking only to document what was interesting at that time. Enough fun was to take just average pictures, requiring no skill, no understanding of exposure latitude and other aspects of imaging (I'm talking about technical stuff only, photographic language was not even on my thought horizon).
Below you can see picture I made in 1998 using Zenith camera, 50mm Helios lens and Kodak Gold 100 negative film. When I saw first printout from photo lab It was very disappointing, there were no sky at all, just white plain stain instead. I didn't know at that time, that negative film is much better than printout they did. Negative film has wide dynamic range (it varies from 8 to 12 EV -you can read about dynamic range here).
5 years ago I bought film scanner, so I recovered what was lost.
[Cracow/Poland around 1998 ]
My first attempts were fairly naive (landscapes, places without context). There are some photo geniuses, who organically understands what they see or do things right - solely relying on instincts, but I believe It wasn't me.
[Me - Cracow ~1991, I asked my sister to take this picture]
From time perspective I can say, I't wasn't worthless effort. Photographing of your own life you can give you interesting perspective. Even looking at picture above, I know that I didn't change much, sometimes I walk near edge of sidewalk trying not to fall (apart). Circumstances change, people almost never.
Enough about me, what about your experiences and thoughts?