History of my photography hobby

I've always liked taking photographs ever since I inherited an old camera when I was about 8 years old. I can't remember what type it was but I do remember being accused (maybe rightly so) of snapping just about anything that moved. When I studied art and design at GCSE level I was introduced to black and white photography and I enjoyed learning about contrast and ISO settings and things like that. In fact I enjoyed it so much that I went on to study art and design at A level and opted to make my major project photography and architecture based. Another love of mine is architecture by the way. Anyway back to the photography. I past the art and design A level and thought that was probably the end of the photography. But then dad came home one day claiming that my school were getting rid of some old developing equipment and it was (apparently) just begging to be rescued. By my dad - and only my dad :) So we set up a dark room in the bathroom and enjoyed hiding away in there developing black and white photos. Obviously I had competitive advantage having used the equipment at school for the previous 2 years. I don't think I've got any of those photos now but I think dad still has the dark room (now in the attic I think). Sadly I never had time for much photography after that because I went to university and then with learning a new job I just never got chance. I was just thinking of getting back into photography when my circumstances changed and I ended up going back to university for another 5 years. That brings me to now really. I graduated a year ago and am looking to improve my photography skills. I find that I am ok with the post processing of photos but really need to concentrate on actually taking decent photos to start with. I'm trying to work on composition and interesting angels at the moment. I'm also experimenting with some interesting effects on the post processing side. I'm especially loving photos with high brightness, contrast and vibrancy such as this one below. Now I now it has its faults but its the *style* I'm trying to demonstrate.