Why? It depends on the time and place you would ask me that question.
Well for me it went like this…
I liked to tinker with software since I was little to begin with, I never learned things by reading manuals, books or watched videos – I was too cool for that. Soon I stumbled across Photoshop CS2 in school at the time and step by step I tinkered with the software. Just wanted to see what this button does to the photo or that one…that was my way of learning. So one thing lead to another and I started “editing” random photos. Then I stumbled across Gimp since Photoshop was too expensive for me as a child and I repeated the process. A camera was too expensive for me and after some time my dad bought a cellphone with a “good camera” and I started taking photos and it was fun and exciting for me. In my teenage days I worked after school so I could buy myself a “budget” camera for taking photographs and at the same time the rise of Instagram started as well. It was exciting for the first part as I gained an audience and hoarded likes, because I thought that was (in my own mind) approval for being a good photographer by overprocessing photographs. Soon it became a burden for me since I wasn’t doing it for fun or for me anymore and became sick of it so I sold my camera and deleted my account and stopped taking photos. Fast forward to the future, something was missing in my life and I just became a father. As I was cleaning my old apartment I found an album of old photos of me as a kid and it struck me…my whole childhood, the moments I shared with friends and family all in one book and I felt joy and happiness looking at these old photos. So I bought a camera afterwards to take and develop photos of my son, family and friends.
Long story short: Just to capture precious moments so they can be revisited later. Since we tend to forget in life what really matters and we need to me reminded.
P.S. to this day I still dont read manuals or watch tutorials – still too »cool« for that, just kidding it is just my way of learing by tinkering, it brings me some sort of happines I guess( no offense to all the guys who do the hard work). Now I dont spend to much time editing, maybe a touch up here and there, most of my time goes into capturing moments
I apologize for typos and bad english since it is not my native language