Black and White Photo shoot challenge with the Olympus OMD

Recently I took the Olympus OMD EM 10 mark II camera out on a photo shoot challenge.

The camera is retro inspired so it has the look and feel of an old school SLR from the 70's and 80's.

Even though it rocks a digital sensor and shoots high res image in full colour and even shoots HD video, I thought I would set myself a creative challenge and shoot like we used to in the old days.

Today, there is virtually no cost associated with the amount of images you shoot, as each memory card can store thousands of images and the cost to purchase more memory is often less than a roll of film.

In many respects this has opened up great opportunities for professional photographers and even enthusiasts, allowing for a greater degree of experimentation and self assurance knowing that you'll never miss that shot.

On the downside however, is the fact that we can often over deliver and end up with 100's of images of the same subject matter with only the slightest variation form the original image that we shot. So we end up with a problem in post production, spending hours sifting through excessive images.

Even worse is the realisation that in our haste to shoot as many images as possible we actually didn't take the time to sit back and reflect on the subject matter and make the right decision at the time of shooting.

So as a creative exercise, I set myself a challenge to shoot only 24 images on this digital camera and to restrict my viewfinder to the black and white mode. Pretty much putting me in the same frame of mind that a photographer using film cameras has to enter to get the job done.

If you want to see the video of me in the city of Melbourne, introducing the camera and this concept along with samples of the resulting images. You can see it on my youtube channel at: