Just like to lean in here to concur. For all its magic and usefulness the internet really does stink at the relationship thing. (btw, whiskey's a good start. You should meet at StoneNYC's crib...)
If it's whiskey, it better be Scotch... I've got Johnny walker black and also the new Platinum, and I've really wanted to pick up some Talisker
Though I'm more of a red wine drinker if I have to be honest.
As far as my history goes in terms of shooting film, I didn't say I learned how to shoot it well, I just said that I've been shooting film since 1994... I was 12 at the time, and my dad gave me his AE-1 and I would ride my bike to Walgreens and have the film developed and ride back the next day.
Cost me most of my allowance!
I would try to be artistic even then, I remember going out to the yard at night and putting the flash on, and shooting the barren tree's in winter and hoping the images would come out like lightning.
Even then I was fascinated with B&W film but I only had access to standard kodak C-41 film.
Anyway as high school rolled around, I stop shooting, it was mostly just that there was other things going on in my life.
Then back about the time that the real estate market took it's big hit in the early 2000's I had lost my shirt in a real estate deal, and only had a few thousand dollars left my name and I said to myself what are the things that are most important to me that I probably won't be able to afford as toys for a while and decided that the two things that I should buy would be a laptop and a camera, it was a digital camera I will admit, a Canon 40D, and I started doing weddings and things like that and it really got me back into photography, then I was reading this article about Steve McCurry, and how Kodachrome was going away, and I decided that I really wanted to shoot Kodachrome on film something that I never got to do as a child. I saved up all my money and the rest the year, and in December 2010 I traveled the country shut about 75 rolls of Kodachrome 64 (and 1 roll of random K25). When I was done with that project I had fallen in love with film again, but I continued to shoot digital for a while until I ended up at this tag sale, that had this old Brownie camera it was a 120 from around 1910 I believe, and I stopped at the local lab, I asked them if they still had 120, they did have a bunch of rolls, this is probably the biggest photography store in Connecticut, however it's not very big but they did have a bunch of 120 rolls and I picked up some PanF+ because I figured the slower film would be best for an old camera after googling about old film speeds. After getting back the images I was so ecstatic that I just fell right into some, and that brought me to APUG, and on this ridiculous journey that got me to spent way too much money on film, cameras, etc. But it's all been worth it!
Anyway maybe that will help you explain why I've been shooting for so long but I'm not really that good or rather I not really that knowledgeable. What I mean to say about the whole thing with shooting the way I expect the picture to come out is simply that as a kid I didn't really understand anything about overexposing or under exposing or pushing or anything like that and simply was shooting C-41 at box speed and so I had to learn how to make the exposure do what I wanted to do, sort of ingrained in my shooting style because of that.
Also I said that I kind of feel like I'm cheating, I know that it's not cheating it's just sort of the way that I feel about it, the way that it makes me mean jerk reaction to when I hear someone who's gone into Photoshop and messed with all the levels to an extreme degree. I know in my mind that it's exactly the same as the kinds of things you would do in the dark room it's just sort of my initial reaction to the idea of Photoshop that kind of pushes me back for a second, but as soon as I think about it I of course realize that it's the same thing. I was more talking about my feeling about it then about the idea of what it actually is. I tend to go with my feelings when it comes to my heart and so the feelings I have tell me that right now I don't want to do that. So for now I'm in a continue to do as I have been as far as the exposures etc. and we'll see what happens in the future