Lomo

I enjoy cruising through other peoples on-line photos when they're interesting and nicely organised. One of the sites I'm particularly fond of had a couple of photos last week that were instantly recognizeable as film rather than digital photos. At the bottom of the page he mentioned the camera, the Lomo LC-A. I went poking around the net and I became intrigued by this camera that I'd never heard of before.

The Lomo is a Russian camera which seems to have met with a very slick marketing campaign that makes the seductive pitch of fun, interesting and unsnobbish photography for everyman.

10 Golden Rules Of Lomo

1. Take your camera everywhere you go.
2. Use it anytime - day and night.
3. Lomography is not an interference in your life, but a part of it.
4. Approach the objects of your lomographic desire as close as possible.
5. Don't think.
6. Be fast.
7. You don't have to know beforehand what you captured on film.
8. Afterwards either.
9. Try the shot from the hip.
10. Don't worry about any rules.

The Lomographic Society International apparently convinced the Russians to start making the LC-A again in 1997 and have created quite a small and passionate following, much like Apple has :).

• world archive of lomo photos * An interesting project to collect photos from around the world.
• Lomo photo albums * some of them are quite interesting.
• Lomo Links
• Buy a Lomo
• Lomo US User forum
• 120seconds interviews Lomo users
• lomo.kataan.org * A rather nice Lomo personal website.

Perhaps it's the novelty or the marketing but the photos taken with the Lomo are interesting. One thing I noticed while looking through the wide variety of galleries was that, in contrast to so many of the digital galleries I've waded through on-line, many of the photos are well organised, properly sized for the web, have something to interest the eye and have a texture digital cameras just don't have. I enjoy my digital cameras but I sometimes regret trading print film for the instant gratification of digital. The SLR camera, digital or film, is hefty and serious; something that takes photos with a purpose and not very inconspicuously. I've always wanted a Leica so maybe I can pretend the Lomo is just an ultra low-end Leica :) Why not as maybe I can have a bit of fun and have a go at a Helsinki variation on City of Glass: Douglas Coupland's Vancouver.

n.b. - A very nice reader sent me an email pointing out that there are Lomoizing filters for Photoshop. :)