I started teaching myself Photoshop back in 1995 when I was given an old copy of the program to play with from a friend.  5 years later I got a disk of free software, and bryce was among them, played with it for a while, and got hooked.  Found Renderosity by accident and said, hey!  I can do that!.  So I started posting and improving my skills.

But why do I do it?  Not quite so easy an answer.  Many reasons I guess.  It's a satisfaction of a creative urge that I have.  Like a geyser it boils for a while, and then finally a bunch of pictures pop out.  There's an emotional kick of being recognized by my artistic peers as well as an artist.  There's the social networking aspect as well.  And there's the dream that someday I'll actually get paid for doing this for a hobby or maybe even a living and here's where I get my practice in.

So, there's that.