Photography Challenges: Orange you glad we did this?

My friend Nimit (Instagram: @nimitclix) returned to Ha Noi and we agreed to go for a photo-walk. He had recently seen a photography challenge on social media suggesting the following criteria:
– 1 camera
– 1 lens, and I took it a step further by using a fixed aperture lens…
– choose a color and only take shots that have an object or texture with that color for all shots.
– I chose Orange.

I had recently come upon a super cheap deal for the Olympus 15mm F8 body-cap lens, a tiny lens that is indeed about the size of a body cap and shoots the 35mm equivalent of 30mm focal length. So quite wide! I tossed onto my Lumix GF1 body – another budget item in my cheapskate amateur arsenal.

We met up on the insanely busy Doi Can street in the Ba Dinh district. This street is lined with shops and never ending hustle and bustle – motorcycles and honking and shouting and music and construction. Back to the setup of camera and lens, I hadn’t used either yet other than some test shots around the house. Why the GF1? It has a bigger grip/body than my Olympus EPL7, has an old CCD sensor which may give a better film-like look. For reference – check out these shots by another great photographer in Ha Noi – Linh (@vumanhlinh.neu) who recently posted some amazing shots taken with this camera. Good enough for a local legend, good enough for me!

So, how did a fixed 30mm f8 with no real focusing ability (it ranges from about 1ft to infinity by turning a lever 45 degrees)? Fun – and with zone focusing at about 3ft to infinity, I didn’t have to wait for autofocus. Nimit pointed out halfway through the walk that the orange was oversaturated and appeared red. I had yet to calibrate the settings to my liking or check this unfortunately. Here’s the sooc jpegs…

The 2nd to last photo is instructions and film canister stickers for a Fujifilm camera that Nimit gifted me – thanks Nimit! The stickers are “panorama” stickers to that the lab scans the film correctly or something. Very cool!

Having a challenge definitely helped me look at my process more closely and made it so the photos didn’t just become a blob of random snapshots. I also enjoyed shooting with the GF1 paired with a lens that gave me no options but to compose and click. It forced me to move around to get the shots I wanted or get stuck with boring eye level shots – which there’s plenty of here.

What’s your favorite photo challenge? I’m always looking for new ideas and would love to try something new. Let me know in the comments and share a photo or a link to your blog, social, or Flickr please!