A few days ago I posted some photographs I shot during a rainstorm, which disrupted a planned photowalk. I casually mentioned it was difficult to think in terms of color having just spent “a month of shooting mostly monochrome.” And I realized, I’d failed to write about my May in Monochrome project. So…here.

May is the month when Spring really takes hold. April gets credit for getting it started, but May is when everything seems to change overnight. That whole April-showers-May-flowers business is pretty accurate. May is a colorful month.

So what in the hell was I thinking when I decided to do a month-long monochrome project in May?

I suspect it had something to do with the release of the Ricoh GR IV Monochrome camera back in February. Even though I’m not considering buying one (at least not until they come out with a 40mm equivalent model), I checked out a lot of reviews of the camera. That means I saw a LOT of amazing black-and-white photographs. (Okay, I suppose we have to address the “Is there a difference between ‘monochome’ and ‘black-and-white’?” question. Technically, the answer is yes; monochrome means ‘one color’; we’re talking a single base color along with its different shades and tones. You could, for example, do a monochromatic photo in shade of red. But for most photographers, we use the terms interchangeably. Sometimes because ‘monochrome’ sounds more cool, sometimes (as in my case) it’s because we’re lazy and it takes fewer characters to type than ‘black-and-white. It takes even fewer characters to type ‘BW’ so guess what I’ll be doing for the rest of this post.)

I grew up shooting BW. That was mainly because BW film was less expensive than color film and much easier to process in the darkroom. But shooting BW taught me a lot about line and form and tonality. The release of the new Ricoh camera got me jonesing for BW again, so I decided to devote a month to shooting mostly monochrome. It was just my luck that the new Ricoh happened just before May.

Just to be clear, when I say I shoot BW, I mean exactly that. I never (well, almost never) shoot in color then shift to BW in post-processing. When I shoot BW, I set my camera to BW; everything I see in the viewfinder (or on the display, with the Ricoh) is in BW. I do that to remove the distraction of color. I want to see the world in shades of tone rather than hues of color. When you strip away color, then texture, contrast, light, shadow, and specularity become more critical.

There’s a better than even chance you’re not familiar with the term specularity. It refers to they way light reflects off various surfaces. When light hits a flat surface (like the side of the buildings in the first photo or the surface of the pond in the second) it reflects differently than when it reflects off the rough, bristly side of a longhorn steer. That specularity becomes significantly more important in BW. Specularity makes you decide whether you want hard, sharp, contrasty images or soft diffuse ones. I say ‘you’ have to decide, but in truth the subject matter is often the deciding factor.

If I’m shooting in the city, I tend to go more contrasty (I’m pretty sure that’s actually a word) than when I’m shooting in the countryside.

Removing color from a photograph removes any number of visual distractions. Oddly enough, that makes it more difficult to shoot good images. An ‘okay’ color photo can, to some extent, be rescued by the introduction of interesting colors. They draw the eye; color can be visually satisfying in itself. With BW obviously, there’s no ‘interesting color’ rescue. The image succeeds or fails entirely on its composition and tonality. BW photography is more unforgiving.

Earlier, I noted that when I shoot BW, I set the camera to BW. A lot of photographers choose to shoot in what’s called RAW format. This captures ALL of the physical information about the intensity and color of the light, which necessarily means it produces an image of unprocessed color. RAW files are meant to be processed later on the computer; they allow you the most control over the final image. In truth, RAW files will produce ‘better’ monochrome photographs.

So why don’t I do that? I’m not entirely sure. I tell myself it’s because when I shoot BW, I want to commit to the image. I don’t want to turn a color image into a BW image. But, again, it might be because I’m lazy and don’t want to spend the time fussing with a lot of post-processing.

The thing about BW photography is that it feels timeless. I admit, that sentence reads like the sort of bullshit photography purists say when they want you to take them seriously. But there’s some Truth to it. The photograph above, shot in May of 2026, could just as easily have been shot in May of 1986 (the apartment building in the center of the frame was built in 1985). The longhorn cow and calf could have been shot in the 1930s. That’s part of the appeal, isn’t it.

It was fun and challenging to spend a month shooting mostly monochrome. But I’m not likely to do this again, at least not in the foreseeable future. I’ll still shoot BW photos when I see something that feels like it should be shot in BW, just like I always do. But after a while I deeply missed color. Some images are just better in color. In the selfie above, that ceramic cat is orange; the roof of that building in the background is bright blue; the wallpaper was a soft sort of lavender; the sewing machine was hot pink. There’s nothing wrong with the selfie in monochrome; it’s just incomplete.

Maybe that’s the thing. Maybe that’s the challenge. Some images can feel complete (or more complete) in monochrome. And some just can’t. The photographer has to be able to know the difference.

I find I’m less and less interested in photographing stuff. By stuff, I mean things. Objects. Including people. Back in the late 1980s, William Eggleston declared, “I am at war with the obvious.” I’m not at war with it; I’m just no longer interested in it.

When you photograph things…and it doesn’t really matter what that thing is… you’re basically saying THIS is important. This thing, this object, this building, this person, this whatever. It’s an acknowledgment that THIS very specific, individual thing is worth your attention. Almost all photography is about THIS. I’ve spent most of my life photographing THIS. Look at THIS. This is how I see THIS.

There’s a term for that–the ‘thisness’ of things. Haecceity. Yeah, it looks like I just chucked a bunch of vowels and consonants into a jar and shook them up, but it’s an actual word (by the way, it’s pronounced hek-SEE-ity; I know you’re wondering about that). It refers to the unique, irreducible, often undefinable properties and aspects of a thing that distinguishes it from all other similar things. It’s what makes each identical twin an individual. It’s what makes your dog special. It’s what makes that elm tree distinct from all other elm trees. It’s the dings and dents and scars of life that makes this different from all of that. It’s the thisness of a thing.

If you’re interested in learning more about the concept of haecceity, do a search on John Duns Scotus, the 13th century Franciscan friar who put it together. I considered adding some of that in his post, but decided I’d rather pound a nail through my foot. My specific individual foot.

Much (maybe most) photography is an attempt to capture the haecceity of a thing. Every photograph of, say, a flower is an attempt to reveal the beauty of that specific individual flower. Every photograph of a water tower or a puppy or a pickup truck or a pair of old boots is an attempt to say THIS puppy or THIS boot is unique and special and is worthy of my attention. And let’s face it, most of those attempts fail.

Instead of capturing the haecceity of the thing, we more often capture the quiddity of the thing. Yes, quiddity is also a real word. It refers to the qualities and properties a thing shares with others of its kind. That photograph of the puppy or the boot is more likely to reveal a sense of puppyness or bootness. It’s the whatness of the thing…the thing that makes it a puppy or a boot.

That’s not a criticism. Depicting the essence of puppyness or bootness can be captivating. People familiar with that specific puppy or that particular boot may recognize it as an individual, but a lot of folks will look at your photograph of a puppy or an old boot and think, “Yeah, now THAT is what I call a boot, right there.” Which is another way of saying they appreciate its bootness.

I began this by saying I’m less and less interested in photographing stuff. These days I’m less interested in the thisness or the whatness of things. I still shoot those photos, of course. It’s most of what I shoot. But for the last few years I find myself trying to photograph something less tangible, and I’m not even sure I know how to describe it. I want to photograph…I don’t know, moods? States of mind? An ambiance maybe. A feeling.

I want to shoot photos that can express a sense of what it’s like to be there.

Yesterday on Bluesky I posted this photograph. It’s not about the haecceity of the dog (who was a wonderfully irreducible and highly individual dog named Luka) or his quiddity (although there was a lot of dogness going on with Luka) or the guy or the street or the city. It’s not about any THING.

I want it to be about being up early on a wet, chilly morning, bringing take-home breakfast back to your apartment while gainfully employed people pass by, isolated in their cars, trying to get to work on time. I want it to be about the dampness of the air and the noise and smell of traffic and the softer sound of a dog’s feet on cement. I want it to be about two beings who care for each other and are comfortable in their companionship, even though they’re of different species.

I want it to be about all of those things. But that’s a lot to cram into a photograph, and I don’t feel like I succeeded. It’s not quite there–not quite what I want it to be–but I like to think I’m getting closer.

Let me first say this: I enjoy the hell out of my wee Ricoh GR3X camera. I’ve owned and used lots of cameras over the years, but I’ve never had one that suits my approach to photography so perfectly. I love that I can quickly shift between full manual control (which is a slower process but gives me control over every aspect of the exposure) and a setting that allows me choose the aperture I want and let the camera handle the rest (which is quicker and far more useful for street photography).

Last Friday I took a walk and decided to try something new. For the first hour or so, I’d shoot entirely in monochrome using the street settings AND I wouldn’t chimp the results. (For non-photographers, ‘chimping’ is reviewing the photos you just shot, which can inspire you to go “Ooh ooh” like a chimpanzee.) The second half of the walk, I’d shoot normally.

This where I fucked up. I somehow managed to change the street settings so the camera’s ISO was set to a minimum of 6400. What does that mean? ISO refers to the standardized scale that measures the sensitivity of a digital camera’s sensor to light. All you really need to know is this: the higher the ISO, the more ‘noise’ you see in the final image. In daytime, standard ISO settings are usually between 100 to 400. I was noodling around with an ISO that was at least sixteen times higher than normal. The result? Images like this:

As you can see, noisy. But because I was refusing to chimp, I was unaware of the problem. So for an hour or so, I kept wandering, kept looking at stuff, kept shooting at the wrong ISO. When I saw a pair of workmen–one prone on the sidewalk with his head inside a manhole, the other feeding some sort of conduit tubing into the hole–laboring with the golden dome of the State Capitol Building behind them, I paused long enough to shoot a photo. I was confident I composed a decent shot, and the camera did its best to find a correct exposure based on the settings…but yeah, noise.

The thing is, I’ve learned to trust the camera. I’ve learned it’s incredibly responsive, that (assuming I’ve set it up properly) it allows me to shoot quickly, reflexively, on impulse. For example, I saw this tattooed guy in a tee shirt, toting bags of groceries, and wearing a ski mask. He was at a crosswalk, waiting for the traffic light to turn (or for the traffic to ease up enough for him to jaywalk). There was no time to properly compose a shot, but with the Ricoh all I had to do was react. I simply raised the camera in his direction and pressed the shutter button. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. Except, of course, for that ISO of 6400.

Noisy. Harsh. But I can’t blame the camera. I’m the one who fucked up. I’m not saying these photograph would have been great if I hadn’t fucked up, but they’d have been…well, better.

And that’s okay. Making mistakes is human, right? And I’m an avid believer in what Alfred Stieglitz called ‘practicing in public.’ He wrote,

“Some people go on the assumption that if a thing is not a hundred percent perfect it should not be given to the world… Either you feel that a thing must be perfect before you present it to the public, or you are willing to let it go out even knowing that it is not perfect, because you are striving for something even beyond what you have achieved.

I wouldn’t claim these photographs are ‘given to the world.’ More like inflicted on the world. But yeah, I’m surely ‘striving for something beyond what I’ve achieved.’ Because what I’ve achieved here is that I fucked up. I suspect I’ll continue to fuck up on (I hope) an irregular basis.

Despite fucking up, I still had a good time. I not only believe in practicing in public, I also believe any walk on a sunny day is a good walk. And I believe in the reality of the Happy Accident, of which I have some evidence: I actually rather like the final ISO-fucked photo, which happens to be a selfie.