This is something I love, but rarely do. Walk and grab random shots around town. Usually it’s something that gets my interest, but not always.

For me the idea is to see what has been captured when the images are processed later. A million years ago I would try this with B&W 35mm film. Developing was a pain, and cost too much so a lot of the randomness lost out.

I’m old school so when shooting like this I try to set my camera to monochrome before I start. This helps me with light and texture when I review images while shooting. If I find something after for color it’s always in the file anyway.

Ellen and I both went for the scene above at the same time. As expected the photographs came out totally different. I developed the above using an Agfa ISO 400 film filter. If I were to match this to an old 1969 Central Park shot of mine the look is so similar it’s amazing.


The beauty of digital black and white is you can process / develop the photograph using one of many different filters to have the look of traditional B&W film from vendors and film long gone.