Okay, it’s been one whole year (plus a day or two) since I unboxed my Ricoh GR3X. One year, and I’m still infatuated with it. Here’s what I wrote about the camera a month or so after I bought it:

[T]his camera seems to have been designed almost specifically for the way I shoot photographs. I’m not a street photographer, although I enjoy shooting street. I’m not a landscape photographer, or a fine arts photographer, or a portrait photographer; I don’t really belong to any of the more common photographic traditions. I belong to what I like to call the flâneur school of photography.

Then I wrote some pretentious shit about the term flâneur. Basically my style of photography is to sort of noodle around places, noticing things, chatting with strangers, sticking my nose where it probably doesn’t belong, and shooting photos. That sounds pretty casual. It probably looks pretty casual to other folks—and it kinda is. But I’m not really a casual photographer. I almost never photograph anything without pre-visualizing it. Happily, I’ve been shooting long enough that the pre-visualization process (composition and exposure decisions) usually only takes a moment.

The Ricoh GR3 makes the process between pre-visualization and shooting easy. It’s designed to let you change the exposure settings with one hand. In fact, the video reviews I watched before digging into my pocket to buy the Ricoh often showed people shooting photographs with one hand. My first response to that was ‘What kind of fucking amateur is shooting photos with one hand?’ I mean, one of the first and most valuable lessons I learned in photography was how to hold a camera to eliminate camera-shake, to give yourself a stable platform. I sure as hell was NOT going to be shooting any photos with one hand.

You guys, guess what. I now routinely shoot photographs with one hand. Every photo in this post was shot with one hand. I have to say, at first that felt…irresponsible. But the camera weighs almost nothing (really, it’s about nine ounces) and the image stabilization system is incredibly forgiving. The photo above? I shot that in a low-light situation. We’re talking a half second exposure at F11. With one hand. Ginger is blurry because she’s walking, but everything else is clear and in focus. That ought to be impossible with one hand. But here we are.

Now, shooting with one hand seems sorta kinda…natural? For example, I’m at the local farmers market, I’m toting a bag with pastries and fresh veggies, and I see a woman with a pug in a baby carriage. I pull the camera out of my pocket (did I mention it fits in my pants pocket? Not like a cargo pants pocket, but a regular blue jeans pocket…astonishing), ask the woman if I can photograph her dog, and a moment after she says ‘sure,’ I’ve got the photo. One hand.

And that’s another thing. For most of my long and randomly wicked life, I’ve been reluctant to shoot photos in portrait aspect. Even with my cell phone, I turn it sideways and shoot in landscape. But with the Ricoh, I seem to be shooting a LOT more vertically. I don’t know if it’s the camera (it’s probably the camera) or a change in the way I see the world, but there it is.

Over this last year I’ve shot 3335 photographs on the Ricoh. For some photographers, that’s probably just a busy couple of weeks, but it’s a lot of photos for me. I’m a rather parsimonious photographer (which I’m sure is a result of having learned to shoot pre-digital, when film and processing cost money I didn’t have).

So am I shooting differently with the Ricoh? Yes and no. I’m still shooting the same sorts of photos, but I’m doing it more quickly, more fluidly, and more vertically. And I’m doing it with one hand in my pocket.