Earthstepper cut his teeth in black and white with stinky chemicals under the stairs. Nothing beats burning and dodging with hands and card circles and then seeing the print emerge in the tray under the red safety light. But that was then. Now I use digital and film. Most of the stuff that I have sent to you is from film, commercially processed, scanned, cropped and slightly enhanced with photoshop. Digital is great for taking loads of shots and then deleting most - great for action shots. It makes you lazy with composition though. So for stones and landscape, it's careful composition, natural lighting and not gimmicky light faked from photoshop. If I was a real pedant I'd still be using a tripod, but I don't.