OCOLOY 2025: May
9 June 2025
For 2025 I decided to challenge myself to do an OCOLOY: One Camera, One Lens, One Year using my trusty Ricoh GR IIIx, an APC-S compact camera with a 40mm full-frame equivalent lens. After a topic-free month in January, I added a different side quest to every month. Afterwards, I present my ten favourite shots in a blog post.
After I needed to think of a side challenge for April quite fast and didn't prepare anything "good" in advance I had a lot of ideas during the month. Not just for May but also for this and the next two months. This makes it a bit easier to start and to prepare mentally.
And indeed, I had a lot more fun in May than I had in April. Though, that could also be because of the topic: Macro. Not in the technically correct sense of a 1:1 magnification ratio and not even necessarily in the sense of close-up photography. The Ricoh GR IIIx has a feature called Macro Mode which offers a focusing range from 12cm to 24cm from the front of the lens. Combined with its lens the maximum magnification ratio is apparently "just" 0.25x, so very far from "true" macro photography. However, the challenge was, to put the camera in macro mode and just leave it there for the entire month (except for some family trips).
Enough with the technical aspects. I enjoy close-up photography of flowers very much and when I got back into photography a few years ago, taking photos of flowers and plants was the main thing I did before diving into more documentary genres. But my goal wasn't to only shoot close-up pictures of blooming flowers but also to try myself in some more abstract work using a very close focus distance for more distant subjects. This turned out more difficult than I'd expected. The chosen aperture has a very large effect on the final picture and can alter extremely how the scenery is displayed, blurred, and therefore abstracted. I didn't get many good pictures using that technique, but will look into further refining that approach.
Now, without any more words, enjoy my ten favourite photos from last month.
