Since the 1960s, one of my hobbies has been photography. I started off with Kodachrome II and soon extended into exploring B&W negative stock - Pan-F and FP4 being my preference. After just three attempts, I realised that the local processing facility did not come up to my expectations and I resolved to learn how to process my own.
Home processing opened up a number of new experiences where I could manipulate the images in ways not available from Gratispool! Processes called cooking, solarisation, posterisation, bas-relief, sandwiches, dodging, burning, double-exposures rapidly became second nature. Ah. the hours I spent breathing chemical fumes and dabbling in dishes of possibly carcinogenic liquids. Happy days.
For 10 years from 1974 I was a member of the local Photographic Society where I honed my skills, learning much from fellow members. My highlight from that time was to have a print accepted in an international salon. Then a change in my job meant less time was available for my hobby and it was relegated to occasional dabbling. It was the development of digital technology that reawakened my interest in 1999 and particularly since I retired 5 years ago, I have devoted more and more time to this pastime.
While you wait for the 9:00 start, you may enjoy taking a look at some of my images from the last year on
http://www.blipfoto.com/gen2 where I have been posting one photo a day. Why not try it yourself?