I've been doing it at some level since high school, but to be honest, I truly sucked at it then. My dad had a Mamiya/Sekor 35mm camera. I used it in the mid 70's till I graduated from high school in 1977. 

I can't be sure, but it was likely the 500DTL, introduced in 1968.  It was essentially the less-expensive sibling of the 1000DTL. Both were substantial, all-metal, fully manual 35mm SLRs. The "500" meant that its fastest shutter speed was 1/500 second; the more expensive 1000DTL went to 1/1000 and also included a self-timer. 

I shot almost exclusively Kodak Tri-X Pan which was a 400 ASA black and white film. 400 was FAST compared to color slide film, which was 64 ASA. ASA and ISO are the same thing. ASA stood for American Standards Association. It was the standard commonly used in the United States during the film era. Interestingly, ISO isn't an acronym for a photographic term. ISO refers to the International Organization for Standardization, the worldwide standards organization based in Geneva. So ISO 400 is the same thing as 400 ASA. 

Fast forward to the 2000's. I bought a couple of really crappy digital cameras out of curiosity and I took snapshots. Then I bought a Nikon E5700 digital "SuperZoom" in 2002. It had an incredible 5 megapixel sensor.

Five megapixels doesn't sound like much now, but 2560 × 1920 was quite respectable in 2002. DPReview found the 5700's resolution above average for the five-megapixel class and praised its metering, color and tonal balance

That lens was a big deal. A 35–280mm equivalent f/2.8–4.2 lens was extremely versatile.

This camera took the "Bee and Lily" photo at the top of this article.