I studied photography in school during the film/darkroom days, well before the age of digital photography. We would process all our own film/prints in darkrooms. This included color, which was difficult in comparison to black and white, due to the chemical process involved. After school, I worked in a custom color and black and white photo lab where we processed film and made prints and transparencies for customers of all types, from fine art to commercial. This education and experience gave me an appreciation for the fundamentals and roots of early photography and the pioneers who brought it all into the digital age.
In the end, it is about the visual image, and when I look at the first photograph made, and the images after that, I also think about what it took to get those images before my eyes. It is beyond amazing to me how that change with how visual images could be made in the early 19th century created an impact on the history of the world since that is truly unfathomable to fully comprehend.