oh the joy of living

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Originally uploaded by markuspalarkus

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

hurrah, technology at last!

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Originally uploaded by markuspalarkus

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…

Bum

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Originally uploaded by markuspalarkus

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.