Rediscovering My Camera Love in Norway

Earlier this summer I visited Norway and Austria, and one of the decisions I had to make before leaving was whether or not to bring my 'real' camera. That being my Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark III.

Last summer I stopped using this camera in favour of my iPhone 14 Pro Max, for all the standard reasons: it's convenient, it's light, it's always with me. And for a little over a year it was all I used for my photography. My Olympus camera and lenses gathered dust.

I even started writing a blog post, 'Using my iPhone as my Main Camera' where I went into details about the switch, though I never did publish it.

But for this summer trip, I felt the pull of using my camera again, so as kind of a last minute decision I chose to bring my Olympus and a few lenses.

Long story short, I'm so glad that I did!

If you have seen any of my photos, you will know that I rarely ever take photos of people. I'm not very good at it, so one reason why I chose to bring it was that I thought maybe I could take nicer photos of my girlfriend while we were traveling if I used the Olympus instead of the iPhone.

Turned out that my thought was correct.

It was partway through the trip before I decided to start using it. One of the nights we spent was in Isfjorden, in a dome under the stars and with many animals surrounding us.

In the morning, I wanted to take some photos of them, and I remembered that I hadn't yet used the Olympus, so I grabbed it and walked around outside. I used my 40-150mm lens as I figured I wouldn't be able to get too close to them.

Even at that distance they seemed a bit wary of me, so I tried to slowly creep up closer to them, though not very successfully. I didn't really get any nice photos of them, but in any case, it just felt nice to use the camera again. It had been more than a year, but I still mostly remembered how to use it.

Anyway, a short time later, my girlfriend was curious about what I was doing and came outside. She noticed the animals and asked me to take a few photos of her with them. She wasn't as stealth as I was, and so didn't have much luck getting good photos, aside from her running after them.

But I kept snapping away taking some candid portraits of her anyway. In a span of a few minutes I took a handful of photos of her and then showed them to her.

Right away she liked them so much, which is not the reaction I was used to seeing when I took photos of her with my phone! So I was very pleased.

And for the rest of the trip, the Olympus became my best friend.

For the remaining trip in Norway, I mostly took photos of her, I only sprinkled in a few landscapes here and there.

After leaving the dome, we drove to a nearby area (Rampestreken) to get to the top of a mountain. We didn't have much time, so we decided to take the gondola instead of hiking up.

At the top we were presented with some beautiful views!

After a coffee break, we continued on to the next stop, Trollstigen. The road itself was closed down earlier in the summer, due to danger from falling rocks. But thankfully the view from above it was still open, though we had to take a long detour to get there. It was totally worth it though!

I mentioned that taking portraits is new to me, but not only that, editing them is also new. I have so much to learn about both aspects of people photography.

Tried out some black and white styles too.

Thankfully now I have a willing model 😊

The next day, we finally met some rain. But it went along well with the boat tour we did at Geiranger. 

The final night, we had a few evening hours in Oslo, so we did a quick walk-around to find some nice places for photos.

Conclusion

After our visit to Norway was finished, I continued on to Austria, but by myself, so there I was back to shooting what I'm more comfortable with: streets, architecture, lines, and so on.

I will talk more about it in the next post.

I'm happy to be getting back into photography with a camera! Not that I didn't enjoy using my iPhone, but there is just something different about using a dedicated camera. 

Especially after being away from it for a year. 

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