Am I cheating?

I have been a photography enthusiast since my early years of college, and never really know what the fuck I am doing. Fast-forward fourteen years or so and still don’t know what the fuck I’m doing, but I do it anyway. I truly enjoy whatever form of photography I’m doing. And in recent years, I have been enjoying black-and-white photography more and more.

In the same way I don’t know what I am doing with my photography, I also have no idea what I’ll be talking about here, so bear with me here.

I often wonder, how “true” black and white photography, is done… Well, I know that with film there are specific films for this purpose. But what about digitally? I know of monochrome cameras, I know the Olympus PEN-F has a manual switch to change from “regular” to monochrome. What about regular cameras, like mine? I currently have an Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark III that I snap my pictures with. I know it has some black-and-white grainy filters, which they feel fake in a way, so I don’t use them. If I want a black and white photo I take the normal, in-color, RAW picture and use a filter to make it black and white, Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo!

Is that cheating? Or that’s how most people do it anyway? Is it all in-camera editing? Is there a secret legit editing magic I don’t know or haven’t learned about?

This also sounds like a lot of impostor syndrome 😅

Regardless of what the true way is, if any at all, I will continue with my way of doing it until I learn otherwise, I guess. 😎