A Photographer's Troubles

I am having the most troubling time with my photography research project. I have found extensive research from a variety of photographers on opinions, techniques, tips, guides. They have discussed everthing from the kind of film to how imaging works. I can't believe how many different fields of photography there are.
I found a lot about imaging and changing your photograph online to make it seem something a lot more unrealistic but with more collage and variety to it. I don't think I want to go into this because I am more fascinated with the original photography and all these new techniques dealing with the computer are not ideas that I want to explore right yet.
The second thing I found, and that I already knew, was that there is a very scientific side to photography and that side is closely linked. (Funny how scince and art are so much in sync with photography.) I found a scientist who has PhD in science and has studied photography as well and I think he has a great website explaining how good photos are made using a scientific structure. This sounds interesting to me but it also takes a little away from the beauty of it as an art form, so I wonder of how much of it do I include if I include it at all.
However there are a lot of things that I am interested in that I found. The first thing is this photographer named David Julian. I read an interview with him and I looked at his site and he has a great array of photos and I love how he thinks of photography. I definately want to include the essence of what Photography is in my paper. Maybe that is what it will be.
I also liked reading this article from Dan Smith about darkrooms and how they work as well. He wasn't scientifical and he offers greate advice on beginner and advanced photographers. I've only read one of his articles but I'm anxious to read more.
Of course I had to visit the national geographic website and see what they had to say. (Photographing for NatGeo is my dream job.) They had a good article about digital photography which is almost inevitable if I want to talk about photography essence, even though I prefer manual film cameras.
Just recently I typed in the types of photography in google and I got a lot of results. That may be another option as I move on, although I am not nearly as interested.
I've already talked about Varp and Photo.net as two of my favorite. Varp suggested some books that I want to get a hold of and I would love to read a lot more on Photo.net. They both seem to have a lot to say about both the spirit of photography, if you will, and about the improvement and learning about pictures. Of course, I have already learned that the best way to learn is to just take a lot of pictures. I want to do that. If only I had a camera. Well, as I am still very undecided all I can do now is allow my audience, if I have one, to give your comment. Please, I'm desperate.