Hey.. I spent 15 years being a photographer, and yes, they can be a right bunch of so and so's! But not all are horrible - I just find some places online a bit snobbish. You know, its just a bunch of saddo's who are horrible to you over your terms of focus or whatever, and they'd have been better to remember we all start somewhere. I can remember going out to shoot my homework for my night class (when I first started out) and a member of the public had to tell me I'd left my lens cap on!

Anyway. Please dont let these people put you off. I remember you doing macro photography of your spiders. There's a place: http://365project.org where I did a year of photo' and on a whole, its a bunch of lovely people of all levels of photography skills. You take a photo, every day for a year, and its interesting looking back, plus its not as easy as you'd think being that organised! You can follow other people, and its one of those things, the more you comment on other people's work, even to say simply you like the photo, the more you get commented on. Also, sometimes a group of strangers will meet up and go walking somewhere & take photo's together. I've been twice, in two different places in the UK but there's been meet-ups oversea's too. I've made friends outside, and I know other's have made really good friends, and now meet up to go to art galleries or pubs etc!

Have I sold it to you yet? Grins. Sorry for the ramble, but doing photography is great fun, and I hope you can rekindle your affection for it.