I'm not qualified to enter the debate of which is "better" or "more professional." When I was learning, and even now, it would have been great to twiddle the knobs, and immediately see the result. If I expected a different result, I'd have immediate feedback on the twiddling. And a chance to try more twiddling. I think my learning would have been much faster. I was always a better B&W darkroom technician than cameraman, mostly because it did not take that much time or pain to re-print something. I never became good with color, because all color darkroom was hopelessly trial-and-error, time consuming, and expensive. It's only Photoshop that lets me make anything halfway decent in color. "Better" depends a lot on the type of work one likes, or is paid, to do. "Better" is also changing pretty rapidly, but that does not set aside the old techniques. Look at the beautiful platinum prints still being made! We've gotten somewhat off track from Michelle's original questions, but it seems to be a useful track. Aiming at being a "professional photographer" is not exactly the same thing as aiming at being an "excellent photographer". [Hopefully they have some things in common...] Bottom line, being professional means you are doing something folks are willing to pay for. Michelle, if you could give us some idea of what types of photography you'd like to get paid for, I'll bet we can be a lot more specific on training needs, equipment, ways to break into the field, etc.