Dual-Wielding the Ricoh GR: My Tokyo Street Photography Breakthrough

By /

Dual-Wielding Ricohs in Shinjuku: Pushing a New Creative Frontier

Dual-Wielding Ricohs in Shinjuku Pushing a New Creative FrontierDownload

What’s poppin’, people? It’s Dante — currently walking around Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan this morning. Ricoh GR III on the wrist. Ricoh GR IIIX on the neck. I feel like Superman out here with two cameras, dual-wielded like akimbo swords.

The Morning Setup: Two Cameras, Two Modes, One Instinct

My foundational setup is simple:

  • Ricoh GR III (28mm)
  • AV mode
  • Snap focus at 2 meters
  • f/8
  • Minimum shutter 1/500
  • Highlight-weighted metering
  • Ricoh GR IIIX (71mm crop)
  • Manual mode
  • Snap focus at 1 meter
  • f/11 or f/16
  • Shutter 1/1000–1/2000

The wrist carries the 28mm for the classic layered, full-body street frames. The neck carries the 71mm crop for the glimmers — the faces, the details, the light carving out expression like a Japanese woodblock print.

When a face enters the light, I switch instantly. GR IIIX comes up, close, intimate, right into the glow. And I try to crush the background to pure black.

The Spark: A Single Frame That Opened a New World

This entire obsession began the moment I landed in Tokyo.

Day one. Shinjuku Station.
A random frame — just a woman’s lips catching a slice of light.

That tiny accident opened a door.

Suddenly I saw a completely new way to photograph: a subtractive approach, stripping away everything superfluous in the scene. Instead of chaos, layers, foreground/middle/background, I started focusing on the micro-moments — the glimmer in a face, the edge of a silhouette crossing into the light.

That’s when the obsession kicked in.

The Process: Akimbo Street Photography

You should see me on the corner of Shibuya Crossing. It’s insane.

  • One second: 28mm, traditional documentary frames.
  • Next second: 71mm crop, close-up etching of form.
  • Cameras flipping in my hands like they were meant to be swords.
  • People walking through the frame like NPCs respawning in a video game.

Dual-wield Ricohs is a mode of being.

I’m working with speed. With instinct. With obsession.
And when you find that obsession? You push it. Hard.

Creative Breakthrough: Entering a New Visual Language

Honestly, this trip feels like a creative breakthrough.

Three years into my black-and-white journey — and Tokyo has pushed me into a whole new visual language:

  • Aggressive cropping
  • Abstract faces
  • Blacked-out backgrounds
  • Woodblock-print aesthetics
  • Pure light-versus-void compositions

I’ve never photographed like this. I’m seeing Tokyo differently. I’m seeing light differently. I’m seeing people differently.

This is the whole point:
Push yourself until something snaps open.
Make mistakes until you find a new frontier.

Quantity Over Quality: The Path to Becoming Great

A lot of photographers take themselves way too seriously.

Wearing the vest. Wiping the lens. Pretending to be “photographers.”
But they’re not actually putting in the volume. The hours. The walking. The sweat.

Me?
I’m putting up entire slideshows — all the slop, the bad photos, the imperfections.
Because that’s what it takes to become great.

  • Walk more → see more
  • See more → shoot more
  • Shoot more → become more curious
  • Curiosity → evolution

Quality emerges from quantity.
Diamonds in the rough don’t appear without digging through the dirt.

Slow Shutter Experiments: Reaching the Limit

Two days ago I pushed slow shutter for the first time.

1/15 of a second. Chaos. Movement. Ghostly figures.
I spent days pushing it until I finally made one frame that felt complete.
And when I reached that limit, I moved on.

That’s the process.
Push until you hit a wall.
Then push something else.

Don’t Take Yourself So Seriously

One thing I’ve learned out here:

Play.

The best photography comes from play.
Not from trying to be a “photographer.”
Not from chasing a book deal, or a festival, or a grant.

Out here, wandering Tokyo, joking about anime waifus, exploring red-carpet alleyways, dodging bees — it all feeds into the art.

The spirit of play births the best photos.

The Stream of Becoming

I’m documenting the entire evolution:

  • The outtakes
  • The slop
  • The experiments
  • The breakthroughs
  • The ugly frames
  • The diamond frames

Because this is the stream of becoming.
This is the evolution of a photographer striving for excellence.

Is one even permitted to strive for greatness anymore?
To admit you want to become the most prolific photographer you can be?

Maybe not.

But do it anyway.

Scroll to Top