About Ernie Emad
A Lifetime Behind the Camera. A Lifetime in Miami.
I’m Ernie Emad, the photographer behind Monochrome Miami.
My relationship with photography began in the mid-1970s when my parents gave me a Canon AE-1 and a roll of black-and-white film. In those days, photography was a process. I learned to slow down, make the exposure, develop my own negatives, and stand in my homemade darkroom waiting for an image to appear on photographic paper. That early connection to black-and-white photography never really left me.
More than 50 years later, I’ve returned to where it all began monochrome photography. Today, I photograph Miami and South Florida with a Leica Q3 Monochrom, using light, shadow, contrast, texture, and timing to tell stories without color.
And Miami is the perfect place to do it.
I’ve called Miami home for over 60 years. I’ve watched the city evolve, neighborhoods transform, and new generations make their mark on the Magic City. That history gives me a perspective that goes beyond photographing Miami as a visitor. I know the city, but I’m still curious about it.
That curiosity is at the heart of Monochrome Miami.
Through my photography, I explore the people, architecture, streets, light, shadows, and unexpected moments that make Miami unlike anywhere else. Through street photography photo walks and hands-on workshops, I now invite other photographers to experience the city from my perspective, to slow down, look differently, and discover photographs hiding in plain sight.
The camera has changed.
The city has changed.
But the search for the photograph remains the same.
Walk. Watch. Wait. See. Photograph.
“I know the city, but I’m still curious about it.”
ABOUT MONOCHROME MIAMI
Why Monochrome Miami
Miami is a city of color.
It is vibrant, energetic, unpredictable and constantly changing. Yet behind the colors is another Miami—a city defined by light and shadow, architecture and texture, movement and stillness, and most importantly, its people.
Monochrome Miami is my way of seeing that city.
My relationship with photography began in the mid-1970s with a Canon AE-1 and black-and-white film. I learned photography by slowing down, observing carefully and waiting for the right moment. I developed my own film and made prints in a home darkroom, watching images emerge slowly beneath the red glow of the safelight.
Those early years taught me something that has stayed with me: photography is not simply about recording what is in front of the camera. It is about learning to see.
Decades later, I returned to black and white photography.
Today, my camera is a Leica Q3 Monochrom, but the philosophy remains much the same. I walk the streets of Miami looking for moments that might otherwise go unnoticed—a fleeting expression, a shaft of light, a long shadow, an unexpected encounter, or the quiet geometry of the city.
Removing color changes the way I see.
Without the distraction of color, light becomes the language. Shadows create atmosphere. Texture becomes more apparent. Faces carry more weight. Ordinary moments can become something more ambiguous, more emotional and, sometimes, more timeless.
And Miami provides an extraordinary canvas.
From South Beach to Little Havana, from Downtown to neighborhoods far beyond the familiar postcard views, the city is filled with contradictions. Old and new. Beautiful and gritty. Quiet and chaotic. Familiar and completely unexpected.
That unpredictability is part of the attraction.
I never know exactly what I will find when I step onto the street with my camera. That is what keeps me walking.
Monochrome Miami is not an attempt to document everything Miami is.
It is an attempt to capture how Miami feels in a particular moment.
A different Miami.
A Miami beyond the postcard.
A Miami of light, shadow, character and human connection.
Miami in black and white.
This is the journey.
