Some people see in colour, but I tend to see in black and white. I don’t know if it’s because I come from the world before digital, where “serious” photography was always monochrome. It just resonates with me more, and with you too, Dear Reader. Or at least I hope it does because in all the posts on this site there is a theme. Apparently. Subtle. But if you look closely enough, you might just find it.
Believe it or not, when I use black and white film, well, this conversion doesn’t even enter my mind. I learned to “see” in black and white while learning my craft back in the day. Nowadays we have digital cameras that can convert your image to black and white in-camera, but I still prefer doing it myself in post-production.
I just wanted to show you the differences since here we all deal in Monochrome, hence the name Monochromia. It might also help those of you who are new to black and white photography and wish to see what can be done to a colour image.
For info, the photo was given to me by a friend on Instagram asking me how I would edit her self-portrait. I don’t think I did too shabby a job.
For those of you wanting to explore black and white photography for yourselves, I would suggest buying a film camera, loading it with the black and white film of your choice, and sticking to it for a whole year. Same film, same camera. Like this, you too will start to see the beauty of black and white, and you will get to know your film stock and camera. Just an idea, and it certainly worked for me.
For more ideas you could do a lot worse than visit ijmphotography.net. It’s a pretty good read…
Monochromia 
I like the Oly PEN-F for similar reasons
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If I’m not mistaken that’s the half fram film camera? I have one too, because I wanted one, and haven’t got around to using it much. It seemed to be similar in feel to the Olympus trip. A good little camera as long as you’re fine with zone fucussing.
Have I just misunderstood everything?
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OK. I’ve just had a look at your site and I totally misunderstood everything. You seem to use your “digital” PEN F, in the same way as I do my Fuji X100F.
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Excellent post Ian. I think most people that came from the “before digital” age took some sort of classes (unless they were self taught) and had to learn to process the film in a darkroom after they took the pictures. For myself it was a Canon FTb loaded with Kodak Tri-X film and afterwards in the darkroom with Kodak D-76 developer where I honed my skills with black and white images. Film is making a comeback now so it would be a perfect time for newcomers to fall in love with black and white photography by purchasing a good used film camera.
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Any film camera will do the job. I just like the whole slower process and feel that I have worked for each image.
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You mentioned the whole slower process Ian and that is exactly what lured me into the Fujifilm X series of cameras. I shot Canon film cameras for a long time but when they switched their “breech lock” lens mount to bayonet I traded in all my Canon gear for Nikon. I shot Nikon film then digital cameras. I started to feel like I lost my creativeness and I shot very few images. When the Fuji X100 was released I bought one because the camera intrigued me. The original Fuji X100 was a quirky and pretty slow to focus camera but despite that it forced me to slow down and think before I took an image. It was that camera and its slow operation that sparked my creative side again. From that point on I have owned just about every model of Fujifilm X series camera made through the years. Of course they aren’t the slow beasts they once were but the external dials and real aperture rings on the lenses brought me back to when I was using my older film cameras.
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