Shooting Portraits of Carmen with Olympus OM-D E-M1X

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It was on Carmen's birthday that we caught up in the morning and did a quick portrait shooting session. We only had about an hour or so to do the portraits. I had the Olympus OM-D E-M1X on loan from Olympus Malaysia for training activities so I thought before returning the loan why not do something cool with it? Since I am still developing my YouTube channel (please subscribe) I thought it would be awesome to take you guys with me and show you behind the scenes of the shoot. It was a fun session, we had a lot of fun, and I cannot wait to do a more extensive, and properly planned out session.



Special thanks to Carmen Hong for helping out all these time, appearing in my previous review articles, as well as for this session. Please do follow her on INSTAGRAM and BLOG.  She was so kind to spend her birthday morning with me doing this portrait shoot!

Since this was quite a rushed session, and I had like 1000 things happening in my mind at the same time - making sure the video recording was properly executed, the voice recording was working, directing Carmen, paying attention to people  wandering around (Malaysia is not that safe of a place, people  can just snatch the tripod and camera on it and run away) while at the same time  I need to figure out my portrait shooting, composition, lighting, and posing Carmen. If there is one thing I have learned over the years - it is that I am a terrible multi-tasker. I cannot do so many things at one time, some things will have to give. This is evident when I finally reviewed my shots of Carmen. The portrait images could have been better if I did not have to do everything else all at once.

Alas, I should not be giving myself excuses. This was a challenge, a difficult one I admit, and I welcome it. There is only room for improvement, and I learned so much from doing this. This video marked the first time I have someone else in my video. All these while, it was just me talking to my camera like a crazy person. Having a conversation with another real person is a better experience I must say, but so much more difficult to execute, especially for someone as fresh as me to video making. So much to learn, so much to explore and definitely a long, long way to go for me.

Maybe I should write about all the challenges I am facing while I am starting up and building my YouTube Channel. It has been a month plus since I produced and released videos regularly, and in that short period of time I almost surpassed 5,000 subs, which to me, is quite an achievement. I take the small wins.








The location of shoot was amazing, a popular spot for local photographers to do outdoor wedding portraits. I was merely utilizing 5% or less of the location, due to time constraint, and also I was filming the whole process at the same time. I shall return again in the future, and hope Carmen will come along too for a second round. This time, I need at least a half day session.

I was using the  E-M1X alongside mostly M.Zuiko 45mm F1.2 PRO lens, and for some wider shots, the 17mm F1.2 PRO lens. These lenses were also on loan from Olympus Malaysia. I personally own the M.Zuiko 25mm F.2 PRO. I thought why not use other lenses that I do not have and seldom have access to?  Else I would be perfectly happy working with the small yet magnificent M.Zuiko 45mm F1.8 lens.

Originally I intended to do more urban/modern structures in the background, and compose much wider. I started with close up portraits, working with wide open aperture and slowly worked my way to wider  and environmental framing, but that did not happen as we ran out of time. Oh well, I guess there will be a next time.

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