Once, many years ago, I spent some days in the local paper as part of a work experience program. Did some writing, story about a fishing boat and some other stuff. The paper gave me one of their cameras so I could put photos to the stories, and for a few days, I was loving the primitive, but lovely Nikon Coolpix 990. We were tought to press the camera tightly to our belly to get sharp images.
Well, when the editor asked me and the other pupil wether we wanted to be journalists when we grew up, to which my female companion replied 'no'. I said 'yes'. And then I said 'but probably a photographer'. So that was my earliest beginnings.
Fast forward a year, or two, I take my father's OM-2 with a Zuiko 28/2.0 on holiday. The only thing I knew was to put it on 'Auto' (or as we'd call it today, aperture priority), and my old man told me that I should twist the aperture ring (the thing on the front as I referred to it) to the lowest number, that would let in most light. Images were crap, but I really liked to photograph with it.
Fast forward a couple of years again. I get my first cell phone with a decent camera. It was some sort of Sony Ericsson, shot 3.2 mp images, and had a nifty flash. Now, I have never had a better camera phone than that. And that was in 2006. I took copius amounts of photos, and after a while, I started freelancing. With a cell phone as my camera. Most people nowadays (feels strange to talk about five years ago as the 'old days') think they need a 1Dmk4 with complementary 24-70 and 70-200 to shoot photos, those were the days, eh?
Then I studied journalism, got my first dSLR (E-400), but quickly realized that I spent more time taking photos than writing, I spent more time than most of the people doing photojournalism, in fact. Then I took a course in photojournalism, and the rest is history.
As a result, the only thing I know to do is this. Pity it's a crap market.
Anyhoo. Adapt, improve and move on, I guess.