Currently walking around Philadelphia with the Ricoh GR IV Monochrome, thinking today about the zen of the Ricoh Mono.
You kind of realize when you go through all the different cameras and choices you have that if you’re looking for the most compact, easy point-and-shoot camera to always have with you, it’s inevitable that you wind up with Ricoh.
There’s really no other options. No other choices.
And so the ultimate creative freedom is removing decisions.
The zen of Ricoh is that it strips away all choice and leaves you with a black box with a shutter button and a lens.
That’s it.
All you’re left with is pure instinct.
Stripping Photography Down to Its Essence
With a streamlined workflow, shooting with a monochrome sensor strips the camera down to the essence of the medium.
Photo meaning light. Graphé meaning drawing.
Drawing with light.
Even the decision between color and black-and-white disappears when you shoot with a monochrome sensor.
And I think the Ricoh Monochrome fits perfectly within the philosophy of the Ricoh ecosystem.
It simplifies everything.
The simpler you make things, the better.
Photography doesn’t get in the way of my everyday life.
Photography is simply a joy.
Photography as a Visual Diary
When you treat photography too seriously — wiping the lens down, going out looking to make a powerful visual story, trying to make impactful images — honestly it just becomes boring.
Photography starts to feel like a chore.
My ethos is simple:
Live your everyday life and bring the camera for the ride.
The photographs I make are simply a visual diary of my day.
I’m out walking. The weather’s nice. I’m commuting.
I’m not trying to photograph anything.
I’m just living my life.
The Closest Thing to Not Having a Camera
The Ricoh slips in your pocket.
It’s the closest thing to not having a camera at all.
You can literally conceal it in your hand.
And that’s exactly what I want.
I just exist in the world, and when a moment comes, I’m ready.
I don’t have to search.
I don’t have to try.
I simply let life flow toward me.
The Pinnacle of Simplicity
It really feels like we’ve arrived at the pinnacle of photography.
You can’t really simplify it any more than this.
Small JPEG files are incredibly liberating.
All the processing is done in-camera.
A 4MB file imports instantly. Uploading is effortless. Everything is frictionless.
Because of that:
Zero decision fatigue
Zero hesitation
Zero friction
And that’s why photography fits perfectly into my everyday life.
My Simple Ricoh Setup
Right now I’m in Rittenhouse, Philadelphia, going for a stroll.
My setup is extremely simple:
Snap focus at 2 meters
f/8
Aperture Priority (AV mode)
Multi-segment metering
If I want more dramatic images, I’ll just underexpose using the exposure compensation dial.
Usually:
−0.3
−0.7
−1
Over time you become fluid with it.
You don’t think.
You just feel it.
Handling the Camera on the Street
My grip is simple.
Sometimes I’ll hold:
Thumb underneath the camera
Middle finger on the shutter
This lets me hold the camera very loosely.
Then I can flick my wrist slightly to move between horizontal and vertical frames instantly.
If someone approaches from the right, I can flick into vertical.
If someone approaches from the left, I can drop my hand and shoot vertically with a subtle motion.
You can even use a claw grip:
Thumb on the side of the camera, index finger on the shutter, allowing you to make stealthy photos.
All these movements are micro-movements.
Almost invisible.
Embracing Imperfection
If I see a subject with bright clothing and strong contrast, I might underexpose by −0.7 to make the frame darker and more dramatic.
But honestly, I don’t obsess over exposure.
There’s something beautiful about imperfection.
Overexposure. Underexposure. Contrast that’s a little rough.
Those imperfections often feel aesthetically powerful.
Flow State and Instinct
Once you remove all the technical thinking, something interesting happens.
The flow state emerges.
From the flow state, your instinct appears.
And with time and consistency, your instinct compounds.
That’s where your authentic expression comes from.
That’s where your style comes from.
Your style isn’t born from aesthetic decisions.
I believe style is instinctual.
But instinct requires time.
You have to spend time responding to your instinct for it to reveal itself.
Simplifying the Process to Find Your Style
The fastest way to access instinct is to simplify the process.
Strip everything down to its bare bones.
That’s my entire workflow.
All I’m left with is my response to life.
The camera is just along for the ride.
Seeing Everything
When I walk around, I’m scanning everything.
Not just eye level.
I’m looking:
Above me
Below me
At reflections in windows
At textures on walls
At discarded objects
At architecture
At puddles and reflections
At gestures and faces
Everything becomes interesting when you approach photography with a blank canvas mindset.
You stop trying.
You forget what you think you know about photography.
And you move through the world with sensitivity and curiosity.
Quantity Reveals Quality
My goal is to remain open and curious.
I don’t take the photographs too seriously.
Because the more photos I make, the more I can come back later and extract the quality.
From the quantity emerges the meaning.
Then I can decide:
What matters
What’s worth keeping
What becomes a memory
Creating a New World
Street photographers often chase fleeting moments.
Photojournalists document events.
But my interest is a little different.
Yes, I’m interested in people and moments.
But underneath all that, my deeper goal is:
To create a new world.
To extract something from reality and give birth to my own version of it.
Photography Is Subjective
There is no objectivity in photography.
No universal definition of good or bad.
What matters is your subjective interpretation of the world.
Follow your curiosity.
Follow the inner child that just wants to play.
Ignore what’s been done before.
Ignore what people say photography should be.
Affirming Life With Photography
Photography becomes a way of saying yes to life.
Not dwelling on photos from yesterday.
Not worrying about what you’ll photograph tomorrow.
Just being present right now when the shutter clicks.
That’s why I love photography.
And that’s why I love the Ricoh.
Because it removes everything unnecessary and leaves you with the only thing that really matters:
Today we’re going to be looking at some photographs I made recently with my Ricoh GR4 Monochrome. We’ll be diving into the photos and looking at the camera in its everyday practical function on the streets.
And yeah — just diving into it.
The Zen of the Ricoh
Firstly, I want to discuss the camera itself.
I find that this may just be the most innovative, interesting camera ever created since the conception of photography. I think about Niepce inventing this thing with chemistry. I think about Atget lugging around a big wooden bellows camera with a rectilinear lens on a tripod in 19th century Paris.
And I just think… what would he do with a compact point-and-shoot that you can carry around with you?
Not to mention the built-in image stabilization that allows you to basically be a human tripod. You can shoot in low light. You can shoot with 25,600 ISO straight out of the box.
One of the most surprising things I noticed was that when you get the camera, the minimum ISO is set to 160 and the maximum is set to 25,600.
And I was just like:
What?
That’s the first time that’s ever happened to me when looking into camera settings.
But the reason the Ricoh is so special is because it strips away all of the superfluous technical aspects of photography. What you arrive at is simply a black box with a shutter button.
That is the Ricoh.
You could argue that every camera is a black box with a shutter button. But I believe the Ricoh simplifies everything down to the bare bones.
If you’re looking for the smallest, most compact, simplest camera to use every day — it’s inevitable that you land on Ricoh.
And there’s a kind of zen to that.
The zen of Ricoh is subtraction.
When you subtract more, you arrive at the essence of the medium.
My High-Contrast JPEG Workflow
With my workflow, I’m shooting small JPEG files with high-contrast black and white.
I crank the contrast and all of the settings within the camera to the absolute maximum.
My setup is simple:
Aperture priority mode
f/8 or f/16
Snap focus at 1 meter or 2 meters
High contrast monochrome
Automatic settings
Processing baked into the file
From the moment I slip the camera into my front right pocket to the moment I come home and cull the photos — the result is already there.
The process is baked into the file.
This kind of approach gets photography to the point where it becomes effortless.
And the flow state becomes inevitable when you’re using a compact camera that simply doesn’t get in the way.
I find this camera to be the closest thing to not having a camera.
And that’s where I want to be on the street — just bobbing and weaving through crowds endlessly.
The Power of One Camera
Coming from the Ricoh GR III to the Ricoh GR IV Monochrome, the camera is slightly smaller and more compact. The exposure compensation dial has shifted, and I’m actually starting to enjoy it.
Nothing drastic has changed.
But I do notice that the processing with my high-contrast workflow looks aesthetically more beautiful. There’s a bit more shadow detail and a small boost in quality.
But honestly — those things don’t concern me.
I shoot small JPEG files.
What matters more is the simplicity.
By stripping away color entirely and committing to a monochrome sensor, I’m reminded of the power of limitation.
One camera. One lens. One processing style.
Run with it.
And that’s why I’m a fan of the JPEG workflow.
Because it removes choices.
Returning to Pure Instinct
When you remove all the decisions — color or black and white, this lens or that lens, what camera to use — you arrive at pure instinct.
Photography returns to its essence:
Drawing with light.
When I make photographs, I’m creating an instant sketch of light.
By removing color and technical decisions, I can return to pure instinct at the moment I press the shutter.
When I’m photographing, I’m not thinking. I’m just being.
I’m not hunting with a checklist, a theme, a project, or a book.
I’m simply living my everyday life and bringing the camera along for the ride.
Photography becomes a visual diary of my day.
The Spirit of Play
Because the Ricoh is small and inconspicuous, I look like a tourist.
And that allows me to embrace the spirit of play.
Through play, I tap into a childlike curiosity.
I look at:
faces
gestures of hands
hair moving in the light
small details
From that state of childlike wonder, authentic expression begins to reveal itself in the photographs.
And that’s where style actually comes from.
Style isn’t about whether you shoot color or black and white.
Style is revealed from instinct.
Synthesizing Content and Form
When I made a photograph of hair blowing in the light on Canal Street in New York City, I noticed how the light was casting on the hair.
That alone intrigued me.
That was enough to raise the camera and press the shutter.
But the duty of the photographer is to synthesize content with form.
To put order to chaos.
So I physically move my body in relationship to the subject — positioning the hair with the facade of the garage in the background.
Those decisions are made instinctively through movement.
Not thinking.
Just responding.
Sketching with Light
As I walk through the streets, I’m constantly looking:
up at the clouds
down at the ground
at people
at objects blowing in the wind
Everything becomes a fleeting moment of intrigue.
By crushing shadows and exposing for highlights with high-contrast black and white, I create mystery and drama.
Sometimes I photograph clouds using:
a red filter
underexposing 1–2 stops
multi-segment metering
crop mode into 50mm
On the Ricoh, I have the video button set to crop mode. I tap it twice and instantly switch to 50mm.
This allows me to create more dramatic imagery.
Elevating the Ordinary
A moment in real life might be interesting.
But the goal of the photographer is to elevate that moment in the photograph.
To make it more powerful than it appeared in real life.
To uplift the ordinary into the extraordinary.
By underexposing, isolating faces, and capturing gestures in slivers of light within crowded scenes, I create a visual solution to the chaos of the street.
It becomes a form of visual problem solving.
Especially in a place like New York City where crowds are constant.
Infinite Novelty in the Mundane
Returning to black and white has allowed me to find infinite novelty in the mundane.
Because light is always changing.
It is always in flux.
For instance, I walk the same street in Philadelphia every single day and photograph the same sculpture of a revolutionary hero.
Every day.
But I remind myself:
You cannot make the same photograph twice.
Because the light is always changing.
And that gives photography an infinite game to play.
The Flow State of Photography
Through this simplified workflow, I reach a point where I forget that I’m even photographing.
The past doesn’t matter. The future doesn’t matter.
When I’m photographing, I exist outside the passage of time.
I’m just watching the light.
Watching people.
Responding to instinct.
Over time, with consistent daily practice, instinct compounds and reveals itself in the photographs.
Photography as a Way of Being
When I go out in the morning, I treat it like day one.
I’m not thinking about photos I made yesterday.
I’m not thinking about projects tomorrow.
I simply affirm:
My next photo is my best photo.
Photography becomes a way of saying yes to life.
Not a way to make great photos.
But a way to remain present.
To stay curious.
To stay sensitive to life.
Photography is a somatic experience.
You walk the streets. You feel the atmosphere. You hear the sounds. You smell the city.
All of your senses remain open.
And you respond.
The Best Camera Is the One That Disappears
To wrap things up:
The Ricoh is the closest thing to not having a camera.
And that’s why I believe it’s the best camera.
Because it doesn’t get in the way of living your everyday life.
Photography stops being work.
It stops being a chore.
You’re simply living your life and bringing the camera along for the ride.
No longer striving.
No longer hunting.
Just living.
And responding to whatever you find.
And that’s why I enjoy photography — and specifically the philosophy of the Ricoh.
The most incredible, fascinating, and innovative thing about the Ricoh GR is that you cannot strip a camera any further down than this.
Essentially, the camera is reduced to its bare bones: a small black box with a shutter button.
When combined with my workflow—high-contrast black and white, small JPEG, automatic settings—you strip photography down to the simplest possible solution for making a photograph.
It returns photography to the essence of the medium itself:
drawing with light.
When fully adopting this workflow and experiencing photography as a way of being, all that remains is pure instinct.
Over time, through consistency and compounding practice, photography becomes effortless. The flow state becomes inevitable. Your authentic expression begins to arise.
Once you understand that photography should not interrupt your everyday life—once you realize that wearing a camera around your neck becomes a burden—the solution becomes obvious.
The closest thing to not having a camera at all is the Ricoh GR.
Currently walking around Philadelphia, coming out of the market. Got some raw milk here — 100% grass-fed. Cold winter days. Where’s the sun? Where’s the rays?
Today’s thought is about happiness — and why I believe photography is the ultimate way to experience life and cultivate joy in your everyday existence.
Just looking up at these beautiful birds flying from canopy to canopy — the canopies being these tall skyscrapers and buildings. When you’re around people in society, walking the streets with your camera and photographing, this to me is paradise.
I always have a camera with me. Today we got the Ricoh GR III.
And when you always have a camera with you, it becomes a superpower. It feels like anything is possible. I feel unstoppable.
It gives me the ultimate excuse to be present. To be grounded. To engage with life.
The Physicality of Joy
In the modern world, we have unlimited food options. You can order Uber Eats, sit at home, watch Netflix all day, and never move your feet.
But the physicality of life is what makes life beautiful.
There’s something exciting about surrounding yourself in the chaos of the street.
Photography is my excuse to return to a childlike spirit of play — to treat the world, to treat the street, like a playground.
Life can become a prison. But you have the key to unlock the door to the playground.
It’s a matter of perception. Of how you feel internally.
I can’t control the weather. The conditions. Whether I come home with a “good” or “bad” photograph.
But I can control:
My curiosity
My vitality
The state of my body
And so I prioritize health.
Photography becomes an extension of my physical practice. I’m walking. Moving. Training my body. Wearing barefoot shoes. Feeling the concrete beneath my feet.
Light cardio. Looking around. Engaging the sights, the sounds, the smells.
If you wake up lacking physical vitality — how will you ever cultivate curiosity? How will you practice your photography?
Enthusiasm comes from vitality.
Theos — meaning God. To be enthusiastic is to be possessed by God.
I want to wake up possessed by that spirit. To release my inner daemon when I’m on the street.
There’s no rational reason I do this. There’s an obsessive quality to it. Something that propels me to the front lines of life.
When you’re outside, you thrive.
When you’re inside, sitting, living on standby — your soul slowly dies.
Outside the Passage of Time
When you’re walking and photographing, you exist outside the passage of time.
We have a past. We have a future.
But neither are of concern.
All that matters is this moment — when you click the shutter.
Street photography is stepping into the stream of becoming.
Not dwelling on yesterday’s photos. Not thinking about tomorrow’s project.
Just affirming:
My next photograph will be my next best photograph.
Even on the same mundane streets every day, there are infinite ways to articulate the mundane.
Curiosity fuels inspiration.
But inspiration isn’t external.
Inspirare — to breathe into.
Life breathes into you. Animation. Consciousness. Movement.
When you raise the camera to your eye and truly notice — life becomes a dream.
Don’t think of life only as it is. Think of what it could be through your interpretation.
Subtraction & Instinct
Practically, I use a compact digital camera — the Ricoh GR — high-contrast black and white JPEGs. Automatic settings. Everything baked into the file.
Photography becomes effortless. Flow state becomes inevitable.
Flow happens when thinking dies.
Motivation lies in movement.
To cultivate your authentic way of photographing, you subtract.
Remove decisions:
Color or black and white
This lens or that lens
This camera or that camera
Choice is an illusion.
Left and right are distractions.
Freedom comes from eliminating options.
When you remove noise and distraction, what’s left?
Instinct. Intuition.
That irrational pull to press the shutter — that’s your authentic expression.
Through repetition. Through discipline. Through going out daily.
Instinct is the purest reflection of who you are.
In a world where we endlessly consume, a compact camera gives you the ability to create.
To express.
Play the Game
Stop taking your life and photography so seriously.
Let the chips fall as they may.
Embrace play.
From that state — flow emerges.
The question that keeps me out here:
What will reality manifest to be in a photograph?
What you see isn’t necessarily what you get. What you get is what you didn’t see.
That surprise — those nuances and details — fuel curiosity.
The more I experiment, the more I wake up eager for the day.
But it requires forgetting what you think you know.
Going slow. Being present. Being prepared.
Photography becomes a visual diary.
Maybe I won’t live forever.
But at least I can leave behind some photographs.
Through photographing my everyday life — for myself — I’m never lonely.
No matter how mundane things seem. No matter the external circumstances.
Through the camera, you can always find meaning.
You can always uplift something.
Photography fuels me with curiosity, enthusiasm, and vitality.
What’s poppin’, people? It’s Dante, currently walking around Center City Philadelphia with the Ricoh GR III, just snapshotting my way through life.
And today I’m thinking about creative constraints — and how they actually lead to creative freedom.
The Illusion of Choice
We have this illusion of choice in life.
You can go left. You can go right. You have Coke. You have Pepsi.
There seems to be unlimited choices we can determine and choose ourselves. We have this sort of idea of free will.
But I believe the true path to liberation and freedom is eliminating all the choices and recognizing that the real path to freedom is onwards and upwards.
Simplify Until Photography Disappears
In a creative context, that means simplifying your workflow to a point where photography does not get in the way.
For me, that looks like:
A compact camera that fits in my pocket
One focal length
Automatic settings
Everything baked into the file
No processing
It simplifies everything from the ground up.
All I’m left to do is point and shoot.
I have a black box, a button, and a little LCD screen on the back that lets me see the composition.
That’s it.
Constraint Liberates Instinct
When I streamline the approach and give myself a technical constraint, a creative constraint, I can liberate the way in which I create.
On the street, I recognize the instinct.
That instinct pulls my body to respond to the pigeon in flight and press the shutter.
It’s not rational.
It’s an irrational pull.
Photography is physical.
Yes, it’s visual — you’re putting together a frame, recognizing moments, watching the background, waiting for alignment.
But realistically?
The instinct. The intuition. That’s where your authentic expression lies.
Your vision sharpens through repetition inside constraint.
If you want your own unique vision, your own unique approach, you have to embrace the creative constraint.
With consistency. With repetition. With competition.
But it’s only possible through the constraint.
Decision Fatigue Kills Flow
Unlimited decisions lead to burnout.
Which camera? Which lens? Color or black and white? Left or right?
That decision fatigue clouds the mind.
And I believe it leads to stagnation.
But when I give myself a creative constraint, I enter an endless flow state — of motivation, of production, of clicking that damn shutter and responding to my gut.
The Goal: Flow State
What I seek on the street is the flow state.
Street photography is about embracing spontaneity. Embracing the unknown. Being in the now.
So I can simply be there — and be prepared to respond to that gut feeling that propels me to click the shutter.
Where photography becomes effortless.
Where the flow state is inevitable.
Freedom Through Elimination
Freedom lies where there are no more choices to make.
From that state, you can create infinitely.
A thousand different ways. An infinite number of possibilities.
It’s a paradox.
But I believe this is the path to creative freedom:
Remove the choices. Stick to one. Run and gun with it.
Today I’m thinking about photography as a way of unlearning — what that means, and why I’m thinking about this.
Essentially, the ultimate challenge for a photographer is to find new ways to play the game every single day.
And my ultimate aim is to never miss another sunrise ever again in my life.
The reason I say this immediately is because the orientation of a photographer — and the way you feel about life generally — is what influences what you put within your frames and how you play this game. And that game lies in the mundane.
Whether or not you have enthusiasm for the day, for the mundane, will ultimately reflect back in your photography.
If you’re waking up eager — marching through the snow… look at all these freaking snow tracks I left, this is crazy — I think that is the ultimate place to be.
So essentially: by unlearning photography, by unlearning what you think about life generally, you’ll wake up with this insatiable curiosity for engaging with life and engaging with humanity. And that will propel you out there onto the front lines of life to practice daily — and to infinitely find yourself returning to the sunrise.
Streamlining the practice so photography doesn’t get in the way
Some simple, practical ways I’m achieving this goal of eternally returning to photography every single day — despite how mundane things may seem — is by embracing a very streamlined process:
using a compact camera
snapshotting loosely with compositional decisions
using a JPEG file that requires no processing
having everything technically set in an automatic way
Photography shouldn’t get in the way.
And stripping away color — using high-contrast black and white — has been providing me a solution to the mundane nature of life. For me, that looks like returning to the essence of the medium:
light.
Finding joy in simple things — the way light casts upon surfaces, people, places, and things — and photographing in a way where I’m curious about how light will render in an image through the lens of my camera.
Experimentation, openness, and letting the photograph surprise you
What I’m doing with my practice these days is endlessly exploring experimentation — tinkering, exploring — with this sense of openness to what will reveal itself when I look at the images.
A lot of times what I think I see when I make a photograph isn’t necessarily what I get back.
What I get back in the photograph is often what I didn’t see.
So I’m using abstraction as a solution to the mundane nature of practicing daily.
I can return to the same park every morning. I can return to the sunrise at the same location every day.
But the way the light casts upon that place will never be the same.
You cannot make the same photograph twice.
Everything is in flux. Everything is changing. The light is out of our control. The spontaneous nature of life is out of our control.
What you control (and what you don’t)
We’re not in control of the light. We’re not in control of the conditions. We’re not in control of whether we see something interesting. We’re not in control of whether we create a great photograph.
But what we are in control of is:
how often we go out there and see the world
how often we bring our camera
how often we walk
We’re simply in control of marching endlessly into the unknown — waking up with that empty blank slate, that childlike state of curiosity.
Curiosity requires vitality
I think it’s quite impossible to cultivate curiosity without physical vitality.
Another practical way I’m returning to photography every single day is by never missing the sunrise — always catching the rays — and aligning my physical body, primally, with the light.
Setting my circadian rhythm. Getting deep sleep. Waking up every morning with energy that overflows out of me into the streets when I’m practicing.
I believe that in order to cultivate curiosity, one must possess vitality in their physical body, and it stems from aligning with sunlight.
And yeah — if you’re falling asleep within like five minutes when you go to bed… consider yourself blessed.
When you wake up in the morning, it’s like you’re born again, and everything can become fresh.
But it requires you to destroy all of your preconceived notions of what life is generally.
Unlearning through non-consumption
There’s a lot of noise in the world. A lot of consumption of information.
For the past many years now — around four years — I’ve completely disconnected from the news, from the media. I really don’t consume anything.
I read old books.
I try to make sure I’m in this perpetual flow state — effortlessly living everyday life — and not consuming anything. And through that lack of consumption, I can cultivate my natural and authentic expression with the things I create — with my photography.
So think more about how you can unlearn everything you think you know about everything.
Through that unlearning, you’ll discover who you are.
And if you want to give birth to that dancing star — you kind of have to embrace the unknown.
You kind of have to embrace the chaos, the spontaneity — headfirst — with your practice.
Fail daily with consistency. Show up without expectations of what you will see.
And over time — compounding with consistency — you will find your style, you will find your voice, and you will find your place on this giant floating rock orbiting around this ball of fire that I seek to catch every single day.
That’s pretty much it.
Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you in the next one.
