Crossroads

Nuns and Shwedagon Temple, Yangon, Myanmar.  Olympus OMD EM5, 7-14mm.

Am I a photographer or videographer?  I'm struggling to make the best of both, but although I have the equipment to shoot both, sometimes the moment to shoot occurs just once and I have to decide: Do I go for the still shot, or video capture?

Rarely do I get the opportunity to shoot both, and the above shot is one of those rare moments.  The video capture of the shot above can be seen near the end of the video below, from 4:50 - 4:54.  The pigeon flying across the screen makes the clip work in an otherwise static scene.

I think the motion capture offers a lot more than the photograph above.  However, it's a lot harder to get someone to watch 5 minutes of video, versus a couple of seconds to view the photo above.  


Myanmar Bike Trip from Kenneth Koh on Vimeo.
In March 2013, I had the opportunity to travel with the Singapore Cycling Federation to join the Singapore National Mountain Biking team in Myanmar (Burma) as part of their preparation for the South East Asian Games later that year. This is a little video of that trip shot with the Olympus OMD EM5, Gopro HD2, and iPhone 4s.

Photos work better in the blog, plus I make some pocket money selling my photos.  But as a novice filmmaker, I don't get anything out of making videos, other than the fun and the challenge.  I don't want to give up one, but I'm not sure I can do both successfully.

If there's someone reading this who can offer up some pointers or techniques to shoot both video and stills, I would appreciate if you could  post your advice to comments.

Thanks!