Gong Xi Fatt Chai! I hope the Chinese New Year’s celebration have been pretty amazing, filled with calories laden food and of course, those addictive cookies goodies for you. This year around I made a few ‘resolutions’ myself since I missed making them for the new 2015 year. I’ll have a Chinese New Year’s resolution instead and here they are:
- Capture my Chinese New Year’s moments with my Olympus EPL7, together with my set of lens
- Pose and snap pictures of my daily #OOTD
- Upload and post these pictures up!
These are pretty simple resolutions but every year I told myself I’ll do that this year, but I’d fail to do so every time. But this year, I was determined to do just that. So this year, I armed myself with the Olympus EPL7 together with a set of lenses like the Olympus 25 mm f/1.8 M.Zuiko Digital Lens (my favourite most versatile prime lens), Olympus 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 M. Zuiko Digital ED Zoom Lens (this is my widest lens that I have which I thought would be useful for portraits with all the family members) and Olympus 9mm f/8 Fisheye Body Cap Lens (I had always found this lens to be rather fun, so I thought I should use this more for that fish eye, wide angle effect).
These few lenses were my initial set of lens choices, but as it turned out I did use my Olympus M.Zuiko 60mm F2.8 Macro Lens and also, Olympus 45mm f/1.8 ED M.Zuiko Digital Lens. If all this lens talk is boring you out, let me just show you in pictures now how my Chinese New Year went by. :)
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| Reunion Dinner of Korean BBQ at Palsaik |
So, this year the family decided that they had enough of having Chinese food for dinner and we ended up in Palsaik Korean BBQ for our reunion dinner, having Korean. But Palsaik actually didn’t have yee sang, hence we didn’t have the chance to toss / lou sang. The barbequed meats was amazing nevertheless, and it was a place I would definitely revisit again.
| Chinese New Year’s Eve OOTD |
| The Family Portrait I |
In the past years, we started taking family portraits after we were done with the tea serving ceremony on the first day of the Chinese New Year. In the previous years, what I would do is that I’ll place my camera on a tripod and set a timer for that. That was before I got my EPL7, but with the EPL7 what I did was just enable the remote control function using the Olympus Image Share app, and set a timer to capture the pictures! Best thing is I can see and compose my pictures from my phone (you can see the phone on the table).
| The Family Portrait II |
| Ingredients for Luo Han Zhai |
Like taking the family portraits and the tea serving ceremony, there is something else we do on the first day of the Chinese New Year whereby we would have to be vegetarians for the day. So for this, Dad would take over being the chef because this was his speciality dish. If you actually counted the number of ingredients, you’ll find that there is about 18 ingredients all together.
| Luo Han Zhai |
This is how the dish looks like when it is cooked. It’s pretty much a massive dish with all my favourite vegetables. :) And for dinner, my aunt would cook her version of a complete vegetarian meal. Here’s a picture of the dishes she had prepared.
| The Vegetarian Spread |
| Dinner Table with the Olympus 9mm f/8 Fisheye Body Cap Lens |
Those few photos above pretty much sums up the activities for my day, which would usually be a rather chilled day because it’ll be spend just lounging around. For the pictures above, I only used Olympus 25 mm f/1.8 M.Zuiko Digital Lens except for the OOTD picture which was shot using the Olympus M.Zuiko 60mm F2.8 Macro Lens. There is a reason why the 25mm lens is my favourite lens, it’s multi purpose uses enables me to use the same lens for almost everything.
| Make up Of The Day #1 |
I don’t think I should caption the picture as Make Up Of The Day especially since, I barely have any make up on except for BB cream, eyeliner, blusher and also lipstick. A really simple, bare minimum make up I would say. To look ever so flawless, I used the One Touch e-Portrait in the EPL7 which is pretty much the beauty mode. To know about the feature, read my blog post here ; http://www.carmenhong.com/2014/12/snaps-selfies-with-olympus-pen-lite-e.html.
| CNY Day 1 OOTD |
And here’s the first OOTD for the Chinese New Year. I am mad in love with the top from Twenty3, the back details of the top is even prettier. It has a crisscross back design, maybe I’ll show that in another OOTD picture in future. Jeans are from Pur Premium Jeans, but I hate the quality of it. When I tried it on, it was an amazing fit. After one wash, it expanded and is now loose. Such sorcery.
| Make up Of The Day – Blue |
I decided to put in a little more effort in doing my make up on the second day, and this was the result. I used a combination of eye shadows from Inglot and also from Mary Kay, which matches my whole overall outfit. I have Maybelline on my lips, which is a hint of pinkish nude.
| CNY Day 2 OOTD |
The skirt I’m wearing is from Twenty3 and the simple top is from Nichii. It is such a coincidence that we managed to find a background wall of the same colour as my outfit is. Pictures are taken by the sister, Clarrisha with my EPL7 and the Olympus 25 mm f/1.8 M.Zuiko Digital Lens.
| CNY Day 2 OOTD |
| OOTD with the sister |
Day 2 of the Chinese New Year are usually reserved for a family gathering coupled with a potluck of fast food feast, because everyone else is simply too lazy to cook. :p My parents included. Since it is a family gathering, I could not miss the chance to photograph the family members with the attractions of the day which are usually the children (babies, especially!)
And that sums up pretty much of the first half of the Day 2 of Chinese New Year, as my job as the family photographer to take pictures of my Mom, Dad and my sister, Clarrisha with little children. We managed to take a family portrait too using the Olympus Image Share app to control the camera remotely coupled with the Olympus 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 M. Zuiko Digital ED Zoom Lens which allowed me to fit everyone in the picture!
| Make up Of The Day – Purple |
What happened after the lunch family gathering was a dinner we needed to head to immediately, and I only had like 15 minutes to change. I realised I didn’t have time to redo my whole make up, and so, I layered an awesome shade of pink eye shadow from Mary Kay over the blue one. It ended up turning into this lovely purple shade of shadow.
| CNY Day 2 OOTD |
Here’s how the full outfit looks like, with the dress from Something Borrowed which I bought online from Zalora. There was a period of time when I was pretty much in love with the colour burgundy and I got myself everything that colour or similar shade. It’s definitely my next favourite colour after the black colour.
\| CNY Day 3 OOTD |
Here’s the last OOTD picture I have for the Chinese New Year, because I have only spent the first three days dressing up. On the fourth and last day of the holiday, I pretty much spend it chilling around, visited a friend and then a simple dinner with some family friends. Nothing much happened though after the first three days, just casual meet ups. Some of which I didn’t photographed too.
And that pretty much sums up how my Chinese New Year is. I did manage to meet with my college friends and a few friends, but that is just about it. So, I’ll leave you with this post, and I hope you did find it useful that I shared a little on the different types of Olympus lenses that I used. My point in doing so is pretty much to show you how I change my lenses according to my needs. If you enjoy reading posts like this, do let me know and I’ll try to include them into my posts in future!
Till next time,
xoxo
