Since that time I purchased my first serious (to me) SLR, a Pentax MX in 1978. I really liked the MX for its lightweight body and totally manual exposure meter. I later added a Yashica Mat 124G for medium format work.
That led to my interest in darkroom work after visiting a friend’s father’s darkroom.
I was hooked and built my own makeshift darkroom including a wet sink from plans in a Peterson’s Photography magazine. I started off with B&W (35mm and medium format) and eventually moved on to color work including film negative and slides. I have self taught myself photography and darkroom work from books and allot of trial and error! Back then keeping accurate notes on everything you did was paramount in the learning process (long live metadata!)

I found it equally rewarding in the darkroom as well as creating photographs in the field.
I am still amazed how darkroom work improved my understanding of photography along with my capture techniques.

I ended up moving in the late eighties and was never able to find a suitable place to reconstruct my darkroom, so I drifted away from photography until my mother purchased a digital camera in the late 90’s. This regained my interest and I have been slowly moving up in the camera and digital darkroom world ever since.