My interest in photography began around 1978, while living in Toxteth, Liverpool. The first “proper” camera I bought, egged on by a knowledgeable friend, was a second-hand Pentax ME, semi-auto aperture priority 35mm SLR. I was hooked, and soon acquired various lenses, and a Pentax K1000 manual-only SLR body. I learned the basics of black & white darkroom techniques at a WEA night class at the then embryonic, but soon to be esteemed, Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool. The techniques and principles I learned then have stayed with me ever since, and inform my approach to the work that I do now.
Having eventually surrendered to the digital revolution in the mid-2000s, I’ve used lots of brands and models of cameras since. My current kit consists of:
Canon EOS 5D Mk III (DSLR)
Olympus Evolt E620 (DSLR)
Fujifilm HS50 EXR (Bridge)
Canon HS50SX (Bridge)
Panasonic Lumix TZ60 (Compact)
Fujifilm X20 (Compact)
Olympus OM-D E-10 Mk III (Mirrorless)
Samsung A12 (Mobile phone)
— all of which I try to use, at least from nostalgia, if nothing else. (I think of my cameras as “friends”, and don’t give them up lightly.)
All my post-processing is done in Adobe Lightroom 5.7 – it’s an old version now, but it still does everything that I need, so I see no point in upgrading, simply to hand money to Adobe on a regular basis.