OCOLOY Collective
ONE CAMERA ONE LENS ONE YEAR
send your images to: stayuntilforever@gmail.com
welcome to the project
All we need is one camera and one lens for one year to change our photography forever. Get away from the same images you always take, free yourself from gear and go in to a world of new and exiting possibilities. Learn everything from the beginning and find your true love for photography. Professional or beginner doesn’t matter. It’s all about photography.
Brake the rules, embrace the grain and create your images instead of just taking them. Shoot less and keep more. Maybe use and old camera you used to love or buy something cheap second hand. Try a manual focus only lens for the first time in a long time and shoot everything in M mode. Preferably use a primelens instead of a zoom. Try a lens you don’t get along with or a lens you never use. Off course you can use your other photography gear aswell during the year but try to always have the OCOLOY camera in mind when you’re out and about. I used my OCOLOY gear about 90% during the year I did my projects, but I had to use my “real” gear for work etc. I learned more about photography my first year of OCOLOY then I did in my 24 years of photography .
Try to keep one style throughout your project if you want to but maybe try something new.
Here’s a few examples you might wanna try. Take one of them and try to photograph only that style for a month. Think more, shoot less.
Best of all, you decide when to start!
Portrait mode ( shoot only with the camera tilted )
Black and white
Landscape
Minimalstic
Artsy
Streetphotography
Action/motion
Still life
Double exposures
Night photography
Fastest aperture
Shoot from the hip
ISO 800
Minimum focus lenght
Slow shutter
Why not throw in one nice and well composed selfie aswell for the fun of it.
Some bonus things you could add to your OCOLOY setup to spice it up: ND filter, CPL filter, Pro-mist filter, mini tripod, softshutter release button, mini camerabag etc.
Set out to make prints of at least 12 images a month or 36 images every 3 months. That’s a total of 144 prints in a year = 4 rolls of film
10x15 cm x 144 = 450kr /42euros /40 usd
At the end of the year make some bigger prints of your top 5 images or more
That’s cheaper than to buy one 35mm film, have it developed, printed and scanned.
What to do when the project is over
Make another OCOLOY with a different focal length and camera on year two
Make your own magazine/book from the images
Do a small vernissage at a local coffee shop
Give away some of your printed images to friends
Inspire others
Keep on rocking in the free world
MORE THINGS COMING SOON…
my OCOLOY vol.1
Shot on Fujifilm XE1 + Konica Hexanon 40mm f1.8
A manual lens from 1979 for a year with my 16mp camera. All images where cropped to 5:4 in the end
my OCOLOY vol.2
Shot on Fujifilm XE1 + XF18mm f2
From 40mm to 18mm to switch it up. Only shot in black and white and in 1:1 aspect ratio for a year.
Ideas & Questions
“I read your article from the Nov 22 FujiLove mag and wanted to say that it is stunning work. It’s motivated me to go back to using Fuji again with a real simple one lens kit. Well done and proves that expensive camera gear really doesn’t matter much”