A Year in Black & White

Title says it all. It took me a while to muster up the courage to do this, because most of my work from the last few years has been in color. Needless to say changing it up to such an extreme degree was/is a little discomforting.

I don’t have any expectations, but I’m very interested in the results - most specifically, how it will affect my perspective and my sense of connection, or lack there of, to subject and scene.

For those interested in specifics, my go to film stock and developer will be Ilford HP5 Plus and R09 One Shot, however I will be experimenting with different rolls and developers along the way. The cameras I use will only be limited by what’s available to me.

All in all, I forget at times that I have only really been photographing for two and a half years. I have a bit of a competitive personality and sometimes I expect to be good at things right away. This felt like the right time to forget everything, learn from the process, stop thinking, and just shoot. This challenge, or whatever you want to call it, feels like a very small experimental stage in what I hope to be a long photographic journey.

Here are 18 shots from 18 different rolls from the first month.