I love it when you look down and the splinter says, 'its time now, i'm ready to go' and you ease it out, leaving just a white fleck of skin where it was. Hurrah! your body i back to normal and free of hangers on.
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
Saturday, September 01, 2007
oh the joy of living
having a cat is a vicarious existence, it has to be.
He does bog-all, and barring the loss of bits of his anatomy, lives the life of Reilly, or at least of Reilly’s cat (now thats one lucky feline).
So you must take joy in his comfortable existence, while you’re working your butt off. To get resentful would be madness
He does bog-all, and barring the loss of bits of his anatomy, lives the life of Reilly, or at least of Reilly’s cat (now thats one lucky feline).
So you must take joy in his comfortable existence, while you’re working your butt off. To get resentful would be madness
hurrah, technology at last!
yes! the shiny new electric thing has arrived! I take it out of its packaging, oh the excitment!
Lets face it, i'm paying getting on for £2k to re-experience a chldhood christmas.
Apple know this, they breathe this knowledge, hence the ridiculous paper engineered packaging, they unwrapping is fetishised.
I start it up, its almost silent, it has a camera-ry thing built into the screen! it plinks, it whirrs (very quietly).
Google-earth, sketch-up, lightroom… they actually work! The honeymoon period begins…
Lets face it, i'm paying getting on for £2k to re-experience a chldhood christmas.
Apple know this, they breathe this knowledge, hence the ridiculous paper engineered packaging, they unwrapping is fetishised.
I start it up, its almost silent, it has a camera-ry thing built into the screen! it plinks, it whirrs (very quietly).
Google-earth, sketch-up, lightroom… they actually work! The honeymoon period begins…
Monday, August 27, 2007
Bum
Okay so someone did some proper research on this polished version of the article but I think I've just hit what journos must have every day. That sinking feeling when the article has been rewritten better than you did it, and the fact that your main point has been ignored and a different tack inserted in its place, in other words they think the original work was crap as was its thinking… bumholes…
The analogue lomo camera has spawned a cultish photography movement with over a million evangelical aficionados in this highly sophisticated digital age.
part of its charm lies in the fact that you can use it even if you are technologically illiterate.
The lomo lC-a is the camera that unwittingly kick-started the whole
movement. the roots of the phenomenon began in st petersburg in 98 .
a red army general, Igor petrowitsch Kornitsky, was quick to spot
the potential of a Japanese camera - the Kassina - and asked the head of
leningradskoye optiko mechanichesckoye obyedinenie (leningrad optical and
mechanical enterprise), to copy and improve the design.
Not long after, leonid Brezhnev distributed 6,000 lC-a 5mm cameras to
delegates of a Congress of the Communist party of the soviet union.
for many years it enjoyed popularity in the ussr – due in large part to a lack
of any real choice - as a leisure camera until it began to suffer from competition in
the form of cheaper, more reliable asian imports. the camera was uneconomic to
make and in 99 the future looked dire for the lCa.
But in 99 , a group of holidaying austrian art students in prague saved
the lomo’s proverbial bacon. Intrigued by the camera, they bought a few and
began merrily snapping away. as soon as their shots were developed the creative
potential of the camera was immediately apparent. Its blurry, distorted colours
and capacity for the happy accident inspired the first lomographers and kickstarted
a global cult.
By the late 990’s the lomo factory threatened to halt production. But a
petition by the austrians and an intervention from Vladimir putin, then mayor of st
petersburg, gave the camera a stay of execution.
The popularity of the camera grew, thanks to the austrians’ clever guerrilla
marketing and their founding of the lomographic society. Its aim was to sell the
cameras and promote the phenomenon. In 99 , a simultaneous exhibition in
moscow and New york was held, introducing a distinctive lomographic hallmark,
the ‘lomowall’.
Lomowalls are a myriad pixelated collage of photos pasted into a huge grid,
creating an arresting tapestry of colour. on closer inspection, they become an
unfolding kaleidoscope of moments captured or lost.
the key lomo philosophy is ‘Don’t think. shoot!’. It is the lomo’s freer and
unpredictable, lower resolution that captivates so many. But its mantra follows in the wake of a 00-year-old tradition of ‘shooting-from-the-hip’.
“My passion has never been for photography ‘in itself’,” said henri Cartier-
Bresson, “but for the possibility - through forgetting yourself - of recording in a
fraction of a second the emotion of a subject, and the beauty of the form.” this he
dubbed ‘the decisive moment’ and his work around this helped secure his position
as one of the world’s greatest pre-war photographers.
He believed that if you thought too much about composition and what you were
planning to shoot, that irreplaceable decisive moment would be lost for all eternity.
lomography is united by two things: the love of the cranky camera and the
lomography website. here users can upload, edit, share and comment on each
other’s efforts. It also acts as a shop front for the lomographic society, nowadays
an extremely savvy commercial enterprise selling all manner of analogue cameras
and increasingly hard to find film.
The plethora of available cameras has multiplied. the lomo is now
manufactured in China, although the lenses are still the genuine russian article.
It sits on the site alongside other ‘fun’ cameras: a rip-cord-powered model that
produces four vertical slices of time, a ‘frogeye’ camera producing a 70° image.
other russian ‘deadstock’ cameras feature, notably the holga, a medium-format
model that uses two inch film and is notable for its light leaks and need for taping
it up between rolls.
The opportunity for online interaction between users has spawned
‘lomogroups’ and ‘lomomeets’ where members gather to hear a keyword for they
day and then disperse to capture and embody it in a picture.
Taking the unpredictable a stage further are ‘doubles’ and ‘triples’. the roll
of film is shot, carefully rolled back into its drum and then sent onto another
member for re-exposing over the original images. Bizarre juxtapositions of two or
even three experiences emerge from the negatives, unsurprisingly the chances for
ruined film increase exponentially with this approach.
users regularly swap comments on each others sites or discuss techniques
such as cross-processing, a lomo hallmark technique where slide film is put
through the ‘wrong’ chemistry resulting in high contrast, and ultra-saturated
prints that incorporate odd colour shifts.
Encouraged by the ‘break the rules’ rule, users will often boast of their forays
into the ‘what ifs’ of photography. What if I used out-of-date film? What if I bake
my film in the oven?
By harnessing the power of the internet for promoting an analogue camera,
the lomo society was at the vanguard of online photo asset management before
the emergence of blogspot or flickr. they also anticipated open-contribution stock
image services such as istock by marketing the best lomo images commercially.
In exchange for providing an environment for contributors to store and catalogue
their images, the society has a fully archived resource at its fingertips.
lomo prints have a vignette - a blurry penumbra surrounding the image.
In infinitely higher-end cameras, huge amounts of time and expense are
put to eliminating this unfortunate optical fact, but the lomo enthusiast will
enthusiastically embrace it with the other lomo baggage.
recently, big business has embraced lomo’s cool, zeitgeistien status, when
swedish drinks giant, V&s absolut spirits, distillers of its eponymous vodka,
commissioned lomographers to come up with a european-wide advertising
campaign.
The move was a natural progression for a global brand whose creative
marketing has become synonymous with innovation.
previous collaborators have included pop artist andy Warhol and digital art
pioneer, laurence gartel.
As lomographic photography is all about the person behind the lens, the
snappers were given the freedom to choose any subject that inspired them, so
long as it summed up their vision of the absolut brand.
all entries to the absolut lomo project were available to view in the gallery
sections of both parties’ websites. each image received a public rating from
visitors to the site. Based on this, a joint absolut / lomography jury selected the
winning shots to feature in the campaign.
The arrestingly successful images were duly booked into the pages of the more
discerning magazine stables across europe and beyond.
the lomo phenomenon underscores the ethos that the creative application
of new ideas to transform seemingly tired or forgotten technology can reap a
multitude of dividends.
This autumn sees the World lomo Conference hit london together with a
huge lomowall display in trafalgar square. and like Nelson’s brave and innovative
tactics that defeated the french navy off Cadiz in 805, which led to the naming
of the capital’s most famous square, the lomo legacy looks guaranteed an equally
long exposure.
Bum
Okay so someone did some proper research on this polished version of the article but I think I've just hit what journos must have every day. That sinking feeling when the article has been rewritten better than you did it, and the fact that your main point has been ignored and a different tack inserted in its place, in other words they think the original work was crap as was its thinking… bumholes…
The analogue lomo camera has spawned a cultish photography movement
with over a million evangelical aficionados in this highly sophisticated digital age.
part of its charm lies in the fact that you can use it even if you are technologically illiterate.
The lomo lC-a is the camera that unwittingly kick-started the whole
movement. the roots of the phenomenon began in st petersburg in 98 .
a red army general, Igor petrowitsch Kornitsky, was quick to spot
the potential of a Japanese camera - the Kassina - and asked the head of
leningradskoye optiko mechanichesckoye obyedinenie (leningrad optical and
mechanical enterprise), to copy and improve the design.
Not long after, leonid Brezhnev distributed 6,000 lC-a 5mm cameras to
delegates of a Congress of the Communist party of the soviet union.
for many years it enjoyed popularity in the ussr – due in large part to a lack
of any real choice - as a leisure camera until it began to suffer from competition in
the form of cheaper, more reliable asian imports. the camera was uneconomic to
make and in 99 the future looked dire for the lCa.
But in 99 , a group of holidaying austrian art students in prague saved
the lomo’s proverbial bacon. Intrigued by the camera, they bought a few and
began merrily snapping away. as soon as their shots were developed the creative
potential of the camera was immediately apparent. Its blurry, distorted colours
and capacity for the happy accident inspired the first lomographers and kickstarted
a global cult.
By the late 990’s the lomo factory threatened to halt production. But a
petition by the austrians and an intervention from Vladimir putin, then mayor of st
petersburg, gave the camera a stay of execution.
The popularity of the camera grew, thanks to the austrians’ clever guerrilla
marketing and their founding of the lomographic society. Its aim was to sell the
cameras and promote the phenomenon. In 99 , a simultaneous exhibition in
moscow and New york was held, introducing a distinctive lomographic hallmark,
the ‘lomowall’.
Lomowalls are a myriad pixelated collage of photos pasted into a huge grid,
creating an arresting tapestry of colour. on closer inspection, they become an
unfolding kaleidoscope of moments captured or lost.
the key lomo philosophy is ‘Don’t think. shoot!’. It is the lomo’s freer and
unpredictable, lower resolution that captivates so many. But its mantra follows in the wake of a 00-year-old tradition of ‘shooting-from-the-hip’.
“My passion has never been for photography ‘in itself’,” said henri Cartier-
Bresson, “but for the possibility - through forgetting yourself - of recording in a
fraction of a second the emotion of a subject, and the beauty of the form.” this he
dubbed ‘the decisive moment’ and his work around this helped secure his position
as one of the world’s greatest pre-war photographers.
He believed that if you thought too much about composition and what you were
planning to shoot, that irreplaceable decisive moment would be lost for all eternity.
lomography is united by two things: the love of the cranky camera and the
lomography website. here users can upload, edit, share and comment on each
other’s efforts. It also acts as a shop front for the lomographic society, nowadays
an extremely savvy commercial enterprise selling all manner of analogue cameras
and increasingly hard to find film.
The plethora of available cameras has multiplied. the lomo is now
manufactured in China, although the lenses are still the genuine russian article.
It sits on the site alongside other ‘fun’ cameras: a rip-cord-powered model that
produces four vertical slices of time, a ‘frogeye’ camera producing a 70° image.
other russian ‘deadstock’ cameras feature, notably the holga, a medium-format
model that uses two inch film and is notable for its light leaks and need for taping
it up between rolls.
The opportunity for online interaction between users has spawned
‘lomogroups’ and ‘lomomeets’ where members gather to hear a keyword for they
day and then disperse to capture and embody it in a picture.
Taking the unpredictable a stage further are ‘doubles’ and ‘triples’. the roll
of film is shot, carefully rolled back into its drum and then sent onto another
member for re-exposing over the original images. Bizarre juxtapositions of two or
even three experiences emerge from the negatives, unsurprisingly the chances for
ruined film increase exponentially with this approach.
users regularly swap comments on each others sites or discuss techniques
such as cross-processing, a lomo hallmark technique where slide film is put
through the ‘wrong’ chemistry resulting in high contrast, and ultra-saturated
prints that incorporate odd colour shifts.
Encouraged by the ‘break the rules’ rule, users will often boast of their forays
into the ‘what ifs’ of photography. What if I used out-of-date film? What if I bake
my film in the oven?
By harnessing the power of the internet for promoting an analogue camera,
the lomo society was at the vanguard of online photo asset management before
the emergence of blogspot or flickr. they also anticipated open-contribution stock
image services such as istock by marketing the best lomo images commercially.
In exchange for providing an environment for contributors to store and catalogue
their images, the society has a fully archived resource at its fingertips.
lomo prints have a vignette - a blurry penumbra surrounding the image.
In infinitely higher-end cameras, huge amounts of time and expense are
put to eliminating this unfortunate optical fact, but the lomo enthusiast will
enthusiastically embrace it with the other lomo baggage.
recently, big business has embraced lomo’s cool, zeitgeistien status, when
swedish drinks giant, V&s absolut spirits, distillers of its eponymous vodka,
commissioned lomographers to come up with a european-wide advertising
campaign.
The move was a natural progression for a global brand whose creative
marketing has become synonymous with innovation.
previous collaborators have included pop artist andy Warhol and digital art
pioneer, laurence gartel.
As lomographic photography is all about the person behind the lens, the
snappers were given the freedom to choose any subject that inspired them, so
long as it summed up their vision of the absolut brand.
all entries to the absolut lomo project were available to view in the gallery
sections of both parties’ websites. each image received a public rating from
visitors to the site. Based on this, a joint absolut / lomography jury selected the
winning shots to feature in the campaign.
The arrestingly successful images were duly booked into the pages of the more
discerning magazine stables across europe and beyond.
the lomo phenomenon underscores the ethos that the creative application
of new ideas to transform seemingly tired or forgotten technology can reap a
multitude of dividends.
This autumn sees the World lomo Conference hit london together with a
huge lomowall display in trafalgar square. and like Nelson’s brave and innovative
tactics that defeated the french navy off Cadiz in 805, which led to the naming
of the capital’s most famous square, the lomo legacy looks guaranteed an equally
long exposure.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
©wontok2007
It is said that during the space race, the americans spent many hours and many millions of dollars developing the NASA ink pen for note taking in zero gravity… the Soviets took the cheaper route and opted for a pencil.
True or not it is a neat demonstration of the dangers of too much choice and too many resources clouding the mind.
In the creative world, now saturated with technology and where bigger better faster are the buzzwords it has again fallen to the Soviets to take the simpler route in the search for creative enlightenment. This time in the form of the Lomo camera. A small and wonderfully basic device that has inspired its own minor revolution amongst photographers just as photo chemical photgraphy is fading fast.
This is the law:
1. Take your LOMO everywhere you go and whenever you go.
2. Use it any time - day or night.
3. Lomography is not an interference in your life, but a part of it.
4. Shoot from the hip.
5. Approach the objects of your lomographic desire as close as possible.
6. Don't think.
7. Be fast.
8. You don't have to know beforehand what you've captured on film.
9. You don't have to know afterwards, either.
10. Don't worry about the rules.
This isn't some Politburo edict or agitprop call to arms but the 10 rules of Lomography as coined by the World Lomographic Society, based in Vienna.
The rules grew in response to the pictures produced by to the Lomo's very manual controls and its tiny 'Minitar1' lens. The singular property of which is an eerie tunnel vision effect in the final print and supersaturated colour.
In brief the history of the Lomo runs so: In 1982 a Soviet comittee decided to design an manufacture a cheap mass produced camera for the benefit of the soviet citizens.
At the time many cheap Japanese cameras were coming to market.
The state's arms and optical factory (LOMO) was chosen for this task and evetually came up with the LOMO kompact LCA. For many uears it enjoyed popularity in the USSR as a leisure camera until it began to suffer from competition in the form of cheaper, more reliable asian imports. The camera was uneconomic to make and in 1991 the future looked dire for the LCA.
Enter stage left [or should that be right?] a group of Austrian students on holiday. Intrugued by the camera they bought a few and began snapping away. Once the results were printed the creative potential of the camera was immediately apparent. Its blurry, distorted colours and capacity for the happy accidient inspired the first lomographers and kickstarted a small but global cult. A near miss was avoided in the 90’s when the LOMO factory threatened to discontinue production again. A petition by the Austrians and an intervention from Vladimir Putin gave the camera a stay of execution.
The popularity of the camera grew and the original Austrian discoverers ofthe LCA put things on a more permanent footing by founding the lomographic society. Its aim was to market the cameras and promote the phenomenon. In 1994 a simultanious exhibition in Moscow and New York was held introducing a distinctive Lomographic hallmark, the 'Lomowall'.
Lomowalls are more often than not group efforts, myriad pixelated collages of photos pasted into a huge grid, offering at at arm's length a tapestry of colour but then revealing on closer inspection an unfolding kaleidoscope of moments captured or lost.
lomography is united by two things: the love of the cranky camera and crucially by the Lomography website. Here users can upload edit, share and comment on each other's efforts. Its also acts as a shop front for the Lomographic Society, nowadays an extremely savvy commercial enterprise selling all manner of analogue cameras and increasingly hard to find film.
The cameras available have multiplied. The Lomo is now manufactered in China, althought the lenses are still the genuine Russian article. It sits on the lomo site alongside other 'fun' cameras. A rip cord powered model that produces four vertical slices of time, a 'frogeye' camera producing a 170° image. Other russian 'deadstock' cameras feature, notably the Holga. A medium format model that uses 2" film and is notable for its light leaks and need for taping it up between rolls.
On registration the lomo user can decorate their home page with a lomo wall, keep a blog [this article was composed on Wontok's blog], view and animate their photos, [some lomos take primitive time lapse sequences] or just cruise other lomographers pages for a blurry take on the world at large. The lomographer can randomly sample images or perhaps browse the map on the world.browser for a lomographic take on a destination; 112,874 images at the time of writing. Want know what Macao looks like, on the hoof? with no holds barred? A couple of clicks shows you the 286 images that ‘Waidick’, ‘Caliou’, 'God2046’ and ‘Mrii’ have taken of their home city. You can photomail ‘Ra-mses’ for advice on a vist to Antwerp or check out ‘7Samurai’s’ food tips for Bangkok
The opportunity for online interaction between users has spawned lomogroups and lomomeets where members gather to hear a keyword for they day and then disperse to go and embody the keyword in a picture.
Taking the unpredicatble one stage further are ‘doubles’ and ‘triples’. Your roll of film is shot, carefully rolled back into its drum and then sent onto another member for re-exposing over your images. Wierd juxtapositions of two or even three experiences emerge from the negatives, although its must be said the opportunity for blank write-offs suddenly squares or cubes when you take this route.
Users reguarly swap comments on each others sites or discuss techniques such as cross-processing, a Lomo hallmark technique where slide film is put through the 'wrong' chemistry resulting in high contrast, ultra saturated prints that incorporate odd colour shifts.
Encouraged by the 'break the rules' rule users will often boast of their forays into the what ifs of photography, what if I used out of date film? what if I bake my film in the oven?
Spin-off phenomena include 'World Pinhole Day' in which submissions are encouraged using pinhole cameras, extra kudos goes to cameras made from unusual materials, Lego[tm] being a notable example.
In using the internet for promoting an analogue camera the Lomo Society were at the vanguard of online photo asset management long before the likes of blogspot or flickr came along. They also anticipated open-contribution stock image services such as istock photo by marketing the best lomo images commercially. In exchange for providing an enviroment for contributors to store (at not too onerous a resolution) and catalogue their images the Society has an archived and keyworded resource at its fingertips.
As a tool the Lomo is especially popular with creatives, who find its raw unpredictablity inspiring. Among the profiles posted on lomohomes, links to design or photography sites are very common.
Photographers, both professional and amatuer enjoy the lack of fussiness surrounding the camera. It is often poorly made, especially original soviet era models and to get any images at all requires some patience and a philosophical outlook.
This seems to break through the debris that any creative personality picks up over the years and allows them to look at thngs afresh, "I learned more about myself and the way I see the world around me in the first year that I used the LC-A than in all the years that I used my 35mm SLR. says 'Chuo104' (Region, Tokyo; Style, take my camera everywhere; Personal motto, "Listen to the trees"), "Using the LC-A also helped me broaden my view of photography and what constitutes a 'good' or 'great' photograph."
Lomographer and graphic designer Jaypeg, (Country, GB; Style, "biffle about a bit"; personal motto, "I like jam") actively prefers the lack of instant gratification exemplified by the lomo.
"Therein lies the challenge. some people say lomo is easy, but in the soft world of digital technology I would disagree and say that you have to learn a different approach to picture taking which can be quite hard to master. The LCA represents the whole Lomo idea of shooting from the hip, of taking your camera everywhere, of being prepared for unconventional results. For me this was the biggest draw and the biggest challenge. That and the vignette. I've never seen another camera vignette like that and I think it rocks."
The vignette referred to is the blurry penumbra surrounding images taken through small or low quality lenses. In more serious cameras vast amounts of time and expense are put to eliminating this unfortunate fact of optics whereas the russian camera enthusiast will take it right on board with the other lomo baggage.
A key aspect of Lomography is that editing is paramount. Followed properly the 10 rules mean there is only suprise come the day that the prints are collected. From there on in the happy accidents are counted and scanned and put up for inclusion at lomography.com, or pasted to a lomowall.
The renound photographer Cartier Bresson was correct when he quoted "There is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive moment" but is worth noting that the decisive moment is something appreciated in hindsight.
Digital photography cannot offer this. Not unless you are utterly ruthless in not reviewing any of your pictures until a suitable distance from the event is gained.
Surely all this cranky plastic can be dispensed with? Creativity is creativity and ideas need to be worked at? Well no, creativity must be constantly fed with the unexpected and the unusual. Ideas mature at second remove, not at the split second delivery offered by digital image capture.
So the Lomo, Smena and Holga can stay, and while we’re at it we’ll chuck out the space pen, get a pencil and remind ourselves that in amongst the noise of possibilities less, not more, may be the key to truly inspired innovation.
The lomoworld congress is in London 17 – 23 September 2007. The world Lomowall will be on display in Trafalgar Square
True or not it is a neat demonstration of the dangers of too much choice and too many resources clouding the mind.
In the creative world, now saturated with technology and where bigger better faster are the buzzwords it has again fallen to the Soviets to take the simpler route in the search for creative enlightenment. This time in the form of the Lomo camera. A small and wonderfully basic device that has inspired its own minor revolution amongst photographers just as photo chemical photgraphy is fading fast.
This is the law:
1. Take your LOMO everywhere you go and whenever you go.
2. Use it any time - day or night.
3. Lomography is not an interference in your life, but a part of it.
4. Shoot from the hip.
5. Approach the objects of your lomographic desire as close as possible.
6. Don't think.
7. Be fast.
8. You don't have to know beforehand what you've captured on film.
9. You don't have to know afterwards, either.
10. Don't worry about the rules.
This isn't some Politburo edict or agitprop call to arms but the 10 rules of Lomography as coined by the World Lomographic Society, based in Vienna.
The rules grew in response to the pictures produced by to the Lomo's very manual controls and its tiny 'Minitar1' lens. The singular property of which is an eerie tunnel vision effect in the final print and supersaturated colour.
In brief the history of the Lomo runs so: In 1982 a Soviet comittee decided to design an manufacture a cheap mass produced camera for the benefit of the soviet citizens.
At the time many cheap Japanese cameras were coming to market.
The state's arms and optical factory (LOMO) was chosen for this task and evetually came up with the LOMO kompact LCA. For many uears it enjoyed popularity in the USSR as a leisure camera until it began to suffer from competition in the form of cheaper, more reliable asian imports. The camera was uneconomic to make and in 1991 the future looked dire for the LCA.
Enter stage left [or should that be right?] a group of Austrian students on holiday. Intrugued by the camera they bought a few and began snapping away. Once the results were printed the creative potential of the camera was immediately apparent. Its blurry, distorted colours and capacity for the happy accidient inspired the first lomographers and kickstarted a small but global cult. A near miss was avoided in the 90’s when the LOMO factory threatened to discontinue production again. A petition by the Austrians and an intervention from Vladimir Putin gave the camera a stay of execution.
The popularity of the camera grew and the original Austrian discoverers ofthe LCA put things on a more permanent footing by founding the lomographic society. Its aim was to market the cameras and promote the phenomenon. In 1994 a simultanious exhibition in Moscow and New York was held introducing a distinctive Lomographic hallmark, the 'Lomowall'.
Lomowalls are more often than not group efforts, myriad pixelated collages of photos pasted into a huge grid, offering at at arm's length a tapestry of colour but then revealing on closer inspection an unfolding kaleidoscope of moments captured or lost.
lomography is united by two things: the love of the cranky camera and crucially by the Lomography website. Here users can upload edit, share and comment on each other's efforts. Its also acts as a shop front for the Lomographic Society, nowadays an extremely savvy commercial enterprise selling all manner of analogue cameras and increasingly hard to find film.
The cameras available have multiplied. The Lomo is now manufactered in China, althought the lenses are still the genuine Russian article. It sits on the lomo site alongside other 'fun' cameras. A rip cord powered model that produces four vertical slices of time, a 'frogeye' camera producing a 170° image. Other russian 'deadstock' cameras feature, notably the Holga. A medium format model that uses 2" film and is notable for its light leaks and need for taping it up between rolls.
On registration the lomo user can decorate their home page with a lomo wall, keep a blog [this article was composed on Wontok's blog], view and animate their photos, [some lomos take primitive time lapse sequences] or just cruise other lomographers pages for a blurry take on the world at large. The lomographer can randomly sample images or perhaps browse the map on the world.browser for a lomographic take on a destination; 112,874 images at the time of writing. Want know what Macao looks like, on the hoof? with no holds barred? A couple of clicks shows you the 286 images that ‘Waidick’, ‘Caliou’, 'God2046’ and ‘Mrii’ have taken of their home city. You can photomail ‘Ra-mses’ for advice on a vist to Antwerp or check out ‘7Samurai’s’ food tips for Bangkok
The opportunity for online interaction between users has spawned lomogroups and lomomeets where members gather to hear a keyword for they day and then disperse to go and embody the keyword in a picture.
Taking the unpredicatble one stage further are ‘doubles’ and ‘triples’. Your roll of film is shot, carefully rolled back into its drum and then sent onto another member for re-exposing over your images. Wierd juxtapositions of two or even three experiences emerge from the negatives, although its must be said the opportunity for blank write-offs suddenly squares or cubes when you take this route.
Users reguarly swap comments on each others sites or discuss techniques such as cross-processing, a Lomo hallmark technique where slide film is put through the 'wrong' chemistry resulting in high contrast, ultra saturated prints that incorporate odd colour shifts.
Encouraged by the 'break the rules' rule users will often boast of their forays into the what ifs of photography, what if I used out of date film? what if I bake my film in the oven?
Spin-off phenomena include 'World Pinhole Day' in which submissions are encouraged using pinhole cameras, extra kudos goes to cameras made from unusual materials, Lego[tm] being a notable example.
In using the internet for promoting an analogue camera the Lomo Society were at the vanguard of online photo asset management long before the likes of blogspot or flickr came along. They also anticipated open-contribution stock image services such as istock photo by marketing the best lomo images commercially. In exchange for providing an enviroment for contributors to store (at not too onerous a resolution) and catalogue their images the Society has an archived and keyworded resource at its fingertips.
As a tool the Lomo is especially popular with creatives, who find its raw unpredictablity inspiring. Among the profiles posted on lomohomes, links to design or photography sites are very common.
Photographers, both professional and amatuer enjoy the lack of fussiness surrounding the camera. It is often poorly made, especially original soviet era models and to get any images at all requires some patience and a philosophical outlook.
This seems to break through the debris that any creative personality picks up over the years and allows them to look at thngs afresh, "I learned more about myself and the way I see the world around me in the first year that I used the LC-A than in all the years that I used my 35mm SLR. says 'Chuo104' (Region, Tokyo; Style, take my camera everywhere; Personal motto, "Listen to the trees"), "Using the LC-A also helped me broaden my view of photography and what constitutes a 'good' or 'great' photograph."
Lomographer and graphic designer Jaypeg, (Country, GB; Style, "biffle about a bit"; personal motto, "I like jam") actively prefers the lack of instant gratification exemplified by the lomo.
"Therein lies the challenge. some people say lomo is easy, but in the soft world of digital technology I would disagree and say that you have to learn a different approach to picture taking which can be quite hard to master. The LCA represents the whole Lomo idea of shooting from the hip, of taking your camera everywhere, of being prepared for unconventional results. For me this was the biggest draw and the biggest challenge. That and the vignette. I've never seen another camera vignette like that and I think it rocks."
The vignette referred to is the blurry penumbra surrounding images taken through small or low quality lenses. In more serious cameras vast amounts of time and expense are put to eliminating this unfortunate fact of optics whereas the russian camera enthusiast will take it right on board with the other lomo baggage.
A key aspect of Lomography is that editing is paramount. Followed properly the 10 rules mean there is only suprise come the day that the prints are collected. From there on in the happy accidents are counted and scanned and put up for inclusion at lomography.com, or pasted to a lomowall.
The renound photographer Cartier Bresson was correct when he quoted "There is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive moment" but is worth noting that the decisive moment is something appreciated in hindsight.
Digital photography cannot offer this. Not unless you are utterly ruthless in not reviewing any of your pictures until a suitable distance from the event is gained.
Surely all this cranky plastic can be dispensed with? Creativity is creativity and ideas need to be worked at? Well no, creativity must be constantly fed with the unexpected and the unusual. Ideas mature at second remove, not at the split second delivery offered by digital image capture.
So the Lomo, Smena and Holga can stay, and while we’re at it we’ll chuck out the space pen, get a pencil and remind ourselves that in amongst the noise of possibilities less, not more, may be the key to truly inspired innovation.
The lomoworld congress is in London 17 – 23 September 2007. The world Lomowall will be on display in Trafalgar Square
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