[Angela]

I've been trying to find a basic photography course but most of the courses in my area seem to link "basics" with "dark room skills", which isn't quite what I wanted. However, I've just been chatting to someone at one of the local colleges this morning, who also happened to be a keen photographer himself, and he says that, not only would the dark room skills be interesting but that knowledge would give a greater depth of understanding, even though I'm using digital. And I do still have my AE1 so it wouldn't be a waste of money to pay to do this bit of the course as well. Any thoughts?

The other thing is that the course seems to focus on black and white photography. I presume that the basics of taking a photograph are going to be pretty similar whether you take them in black and white or in colour...or is that a bit of a sweeping statement?