USER REPORT: Myanmar with my OM-D E-M5 by Suryo Widjaja

August 14, 2013 Daily Inspiration, essay, Guest Post, Inspiration, Mirrorless, Olympus, Photo Trips, Travel, User Reports 46

USER REPORT: Myanmar with my OM-D E-M5 by Suryo Widjaja

Hi Steve,

As I have been reading your past Daily Inspirations pages about Myanmar from few of your readers, I found different perspective of Myanmar through my lens. For me, Myanmar is a must visit country for Photographers before this country infected by Western’s culture ( like Thailand and Vietnam, soon Cambodia).

I went to Myanmar last January 2013, with other 19 photographers from Indonesia for Photographic Tour. Main reason to visit Myanmar at that time was for “Bagan’s Festival” which only happen once a year. It has been beautiful, inspiring, adventure 6 days of our life, seeing Myanmar like Indonesia back in early 80’s, very friendly people, safe, food is nice (but do not eat food and drink water from the street, they might not friendly for our stomach). Tips before visiting Myanmar: 1. Pack yourself with medicines: sore throat, flue & cough, 2. Bring Masker (keep you from dusty air, what you see in the landscape photos which have haze or mist, they were actually dust!), 3. Wear Sandals/ open-toe-slipper, because we have to take off our sandals to go into temples or sacred place, shoes will be inconvenience.

Every one on this tour was packed with heavy gear of “big guns”, few with Leica gear and fuji XE, I was packed with 2 body of OMD-EM5 (one body I borrowed from my brother-in-law), brought my 12mm, 17mm and 75mm, but most of the time i was in Myanmar, I set my camera with 17mm and the other one with 75mm. What you see in my Photos, most of them was taken with Oly 17mm F1.8 except for Close up portrait and landscapes, they were taken using Oly 75mm, for 12mm most of the time just stay in the bag. My motto for this trip, travel lite and took good photos! LOL.

All the photos were minor edited in Photoshop. Pull out the DR and color tone on the Adobe Camera Raw, adding little bit of effect on NIK Color fx.

Hope your readers enjoy these photos.

Warms Regards,

Suryo

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

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46 Comments

  4. Seen these before – certainly the last one. Anyway really good images and very interesting to me as my neighbours are Burmese refugees. Your images show the hardship on the peoples faces and yet captures beauty as well. Thanks.

  5. Fantastic images! The ones of the monks remind me of my favorite photographer, Steve McCurry.

    • Hi Myo, can’t get enough to explore your Country!! i miss Bagan already and Myanmar people are very welcome to foreigners. I have not explore Mandalay and inle Lake festival yet, should find time to go back there.

      cheers.
      Suryo

  8. These photos are great and OM-D is a great camera, but photographers like Steve McCurry take better shots. People, why do not you shoot place you are living in? Everybody try to show some exotic countries. I’ve seen so many great Burma shots that I don’t have any thoughts to go there personally. Suryo, I don’t know who you are and where are you from and I’m interested in this more than viewing thousand’s photo of exotic country. Please, try to understand me, I have no idea to offend you.

    • Hi Atmamont, thank you for your concern. i do love Steve McCurry’s Shots and i even bought couple of his books from Amazon.com. i studied the way he saw his objects, how he captured, how he SET-UP his shots, etc. I once told that he was one of the apprentice of henri cartier-bresson and i have studied both of their works, and i found similarity between Steve McCurry’s and HCB’s Shots, the differences were time, object and place. As amateur photographers/ enthusiast photographers (like me), for sure we want to shots like pro so we want to get similiar shots like pro. In process of learning by copying what pro already did, then we can find our own style, that is when we become better photographers. If you have followed Steve’s Daily Inspirations pages, you could found my shots where i lived now, Indonesia. I have contributed 2 Daily pages so far, introducing the shots taken from my Home Country, and i will keep contribute to Steve Huff’s web site to introduce my Country’s diversity in Cultures to all Steve Huff’s readers around the world (Once he aprroved my email, hahahahaha). The reason Steve’s Daily Inspirations exist, so people around the world can make connection, friends and networks, like i did to one of daily inspiration’s contributor “HAWK” from Shanghai China, i loved his Street Photography shots and one day, i would like him to take me where he did the shots, So does why Steve Huff always open and allowed his contributors to put their own website, facebook page, etc, so all his readers can make contact to each other.

      For this Myanmar report, what i would like to share with Steve’s readers was the feeling i have experienced, so for those who have heart of traveling and adventurous photography, maybe can contact me, ask me more detail about Myanmar before they go there.

      I am sorry if i wrong, maybe you are not type of person like to travel around ( I’ve seen so many great Burma shots that I don’t have any thoughts to go there personally) but me, i want to explore the world before i die. I just do not want to enjoy other people works by seeing, but i want to have the feeling when they take the shots

      cheers and peace…

      Suryo

  9. “ before this country infected by Western’s culture ( like Thailand and Vietnam, soon Cambodia).” So that you can see its light as a baroque european painter (Caravaggio, La Tour) stressing the mysticism of the theme. Amazing what you can do without ultra expensive ultra shallow DOF. Congratulations once again.

  15. Rich colours and good compositions. Liked the second one in particular with its almost 3-D effect.

    And mercifully no myriad of hot-air balloons over the plain of temples..

    • Hi James, for information, you can get landscape over bagan in sunset and sunrise, my photo you were looked at was taken during sunset, which no air ballon, i had few shots from sunrise which have air ballon in them, but i did not post them here….if you have a chance to visit Myanmar…please stay in Bagan for 4-5 Nights…i did not get a chance to shot from below the statues as you can see at my photo…there were “ROL” came through from the trees…i should got down there for the next day….but my schedule was to tight.

      • Interesting, Suryo. Thanks for the tip about Bagan.

        I was trying to work out why I liked no.2. Think it might be the three people standing in the foreground make a (triangular) shape repeated by the building behind them.

        Great work. With a touch of National Geo. about it.

  21. Great shots Suryo! I love the mood in the pictures and your eye for composition. I may be time for me to take the plunge and invest in a OM-D and two nice primes myself 🙂

  22. Great and fantastic shots. One more reason that shows me that switching from Canon EOS to OM-D was more than right 😉

  24. Excellent work and, dare I say, post processing (photos that look a bit ‘unreal’ are still very pleasant to look at) – not seen too often.

  25. Thank All for appreciating my works and especially Steve for putting my works AGAIN in his website! @Stewart Scott: although i set my EM5 to capture RAW+JPEG, i always want to check on the RAW files, as maybe the JPEG files from EM5 already give rich color, but sometimes from RAW files i can pull out some DR(Dynamic Range) from the photos which JPEG files could not captured and yes i love PP, hahahaha, but only minor coz i hate spend hours just for PP.

  31. Simply fantastic shots and beautifully–and boldly–processed. I never comment on these inspirations as great as they often are, but this one motivated me to do so. Hats off.

  33. Awesome, you took me away from my normal life for a little while, to somewhere simpler — thank you!

    What a perfect travel setup — two OM-Ds with primes.

  34. Great shots, Suryo! Olympus cameras do seem to catch colour very well. hasn’t there always been a place for a little PP (post processing?). The OM-D does seem a very capable camera, I started using an OM-10, then bought the OM-4Ti. They were always lighter cameras to carry with you. not the great weight or size or the other popular brands. Only the introduction of the MF only, monochrome rangefinder encouraged me to resume my photography. Great work reminds me of the National Geographic images!

    • And not a Leica in sight. Far better than most of the posts on this Leica fanboy outlet from users with kit probably 20 times the cost of your set up. Amazing photos.

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