Tokyo Monochrome - Golden Hour

Perfect sunlight, 70-year old lens, and 30 minutes on the street.

I haven’t shot monochrome on my Leica M10 in months. I save the black & white aesthetic for film. But for some reason today, I decided to go out about 45 minutes ago (as I type this) to discover what the sun could give me.

I have a lens that was made about 70 years ago, a Canon 50mm f1.8, which is magical in the right scenes. Swirly bokeh and barrel effect makes it quite artistic. Portraits, flowers, and shallow depth of field is where this lens shines.

I shot JPG and RAW files, but the JPGs are sort of meh, so I tossed ‘em. The RAW files, converted to monochrome look epic.

There’s a saying that I hear quite often from my pals, “I’m chasing the light!”. I rarely use this, but today I was weaving all over the place trying to find the right scenes. I was, indeed, chasing the light for a great shot.

And there it is. This is what the last hour looked like for me. Tokyo is really cool in color, but sometimes monochrome shines.