An Explosion of Color | Seen in Black & White

September 18–20, 2026 | West Palm Beach, Florida

Some assignments seem almost designed to challenge the way you normally photograph.

This weekend, I’ll be heading to West Palm Beach with press credentials to cover UltraCon South Florida for Monochrome Miami—and there’s one obvious problem: UltraCon is an explosion of color.

Cosplay. Characters. Costumes. Makeup. Props. Anime. Comics. Pop culture. Everywhere you look, there will be color competing for your attention.

And I’m going to photograph it all in black and white.

That may sound counterintuitive, but that’s exactly what makes this assignment exciting to me.

When you remove color, you’re forced to look differently. The costume becomes texture and form. Makeup becomes contrast. A character's expression becomes more important. Light and shadow begin to tell the story. And behind all the spectacle are the people—the personalities, emotions, creativity, and passion that make an event like UltraCon come alive.

For three days, I’ll be walking the convention floor looking for those moments that might otherwise get lost in the explosion of color. The dramatic. The unexpected. The funny. The mysterious. The human.

This is also very much in keeping with the philosophy behind Monochrome Miami: taking something familiar and seeing it differently.

I’m not going to try to make UltraCon look like it was never colorful. Quite the opposite. I want the absence of color to make you feel the color that was there.

I’ll be photographing the event exclusively in monochrome, looking for the light, shadows, expressions, details, and spontaneous moments that tell the story beyond the costumes and spectacle.

The photographs from the weekend will become part of the Monochrome Miami Journal and photographic archive.

Three days. An explosion of color. One camera. No color.

Let’s see what happens.

— Ernie Emad
Monochrome Miami

Ultracon Comic Con September 18th - 2oth, 2026 West Palm Beach, Florida