Lomo

Lomo

my first step into the world of lomography

roll number one

“

”

S. 1

S. 2Exposed...

One camera + a tripod and a flick arround with

the bulb setting

Small beginnings... a look at the first couple of shots taken and an in-troduction to lomography.

S. 3A trip to the country... a set of pictures taken onbord my motorcycle travelling arround the local area.

S. 4Snowfall... the south east was cov-ered in 5-10cm of snow, so I let the dogs loose in the garden.

Lomography is the commercial trademark of Lo-mographische AG, Austria for products and services catering to lo-fi photographers. The name is inspired by the former state-run optics manufacturer LOMO PLC of Saint Petersburg, Russia. LOMO PLC created and produced the 35mm LOMO LC-A Compact Automat camera — which became the centerpiece of Lomogra-phy’s marketing and sales activities. This camera was loosely based upon the Cosina CX-1 and introduced in the early 1980s.In 1991, the Austrian founders of Lomography dis-covered the Lomo LC-A. They were “charmed by the unique, colorful, and sometimes blurry” images that the camera produced. After a series of international art exhibitions and marketing, Lomography signed an exclusive distribution agreement with LOMO PLC —

thereby becoming the sole distributor of all Lomo LC-A cameras outside of the Soviet Union.Since the introduction of the original Lomo LC-A, Lomography has produced and marketed various lines of branded analogue cameras. Most of these cameras are designed to produce a single photographic effect. In 2005, production of the original Lomo LC-A was discontinued. Its replacement, the LC-A+, was intro-duced in Fall 2006. The new camera, made in China rather than Russia, featured the original Russian lens manufactured by LOMO PLC. This changed as of mid-2007 with the lens now made in China as well. Similar to Eastman Kodak’s concept of the “Kodak moment”, the Lomography website endorses a motto of “Don’t Think, Just Shoot”. This motto is accompanied by the Ten Golden Rules of Lomography; guidelines encourag-

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irror’. february 2012. k

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200 filmshot number 5. ‘cheese’. february 2012. kodak ISO 200 film

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ing spontaneity and minimal consideration of formal technique. The cameras marketed by Lomography are generally low-fidelity and inexpensively constructed. Some cameras make use of multiple lenses and colored flashes, or exhibit optical distortions and light leaks.Current models marketed by Lomographische AG include Lomo LC-A, Diana, Holga, Holga 35mm, Actionsampler, Frogeye, Pop-9, Oktomat, Fisheye, Fisheye2, Colorsplash, Colorsplash Flash, F-stop Bang, SuperSampler, Horizon 202, Seagull TLR, and Smena 8M. The company also resells dead stock Polaroid cam-eras and Russian dead stock.Introductions over,

long exposure

shot number 8. ‘bridge over troubled water’. february 2012. kodak ISO 200 film

This was an experiment with the bulb setting on the Diana Mini camera. Since darkness had fallen I wanted to try this technique having seen some of the examples on the lomography website. I set the camera to bulb setting, set the aperture switch to low light and fixxed the camera to a tripod.

shot number 10. ‘bridge over troubled water + 2/4’. february 2012. kodak ISO 200 film

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Stories can be told in many different ways, in primitive life, cavemen used to sit around fires and share stories of the wondrous beasts and dangerous gods that they believed in. Times have changed and with that is the way we communicate; we no longer take time to say ‘good morning’ with a handshake; its become ‘Hi’ with nod of the head. Similarly, our language has changed, in prior eras, without technology, communication was done by word of mouth; now days a text message con-taining drastically abbreviated words such as ‘LOL’ and ‘BRB’. Is this because we live in a fast paced society where any time that can be saved to do something else is a necessity? This change in western society has made an impact on art and the use of photography as the use of images have also been abbreviated and cut down in order to keep up with the pace of people in todays society. Nowadays has a single image that is bold and hits you with its conceptual image or is relatively simple to understand quickly has become the key to a

good photo? As the old cliche goes… is a picture really worth ‘a thousand words’? Norman Rockwell was a painter/illustrator of the 20th century. He painted large canvasses of brilliantly created scenes which seem to come alive as you look at them and enter the scenario there depicting. This piece for example; Shuffelton’s Barbershop (April 29th 1950, shows a look through a window of an old and traditional barber shop after hours, only to see that the barber and his quartet are just obscured and playing in the cramped back room. From this image you can build the story of the barber that Rockwell was trying to portray. The barber who is working in a very traditional shop, considering this image was published in the 1950’s the shop has a feel of a much older age, hinting to the age of the barber; the coal stoked stove and somewhat petite and stuffy room pulls you through the window in which you are observ-ing through and places you in the warm feeling room that is the barber shop. Then you see the band in the

back room, the fact that the barber is in the cramped back room with his band possibly shows the strong bond he has with his band members who are most probably either very good friends or regular visitors to his shop. Conceptually, Rockwell aimed to make American people reflect on their culture, here he is doing this by showing how no one would expect the barber to have his own band of cellos and violins if they simply looked in through the window on the way past during there daily routine; possibly also shown by the fact that the band are obscured from vision as its something that would be completely unexpected. This would have taken hours for Rockwell to painstakingly recreate this scene on canvas, however, the thing that made Rockwell was his covers of The Saturday Evening Post. This piece above was just one of those, a brilliantly created piece of artwork, condensed from a huge size into a small cover for a bimonthly magazine, meaning all the work that Rockwell put into the piece, would often be dismissed and forgotten as the viewer looks at the cover thinking “thats nice” and continues on, opening the magazine and flicking through the different types media and literature that The Saturday Post published. Lara Cumming’s review of Norman Rockwell’s America in the Dulwich Picture Gallery, London similarly agrees with this view as she says:

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“The face on the canvas is emerging as a pencil sketch, not an oil painting: a drawing of Norman Normal, as he was joshingly known. Rockwell has used paint to imitate pencil; down below, his name is lettered in up-per and lower case, just as it appeared on the Saturday Evening Post covers that made him America’s favorite 20th-century artist. Right down to the printed “signa-ture”, in fact, the self-portrait on the canvas is turning into a cover. It is a sweet but sad conceit, Rockwell’s modest way of showing his readers that he was actu-ally a painter. For most people thought he produced pictures, not paintings, and many still do, downgrading Rockwell’s popular art to nothing more than sentimen-tal picture-making.”

Here the writer shows how Rockwell’s brilliantly cre-ated pieces of art become mere images or ‘pictures’ as she puts it. With Rockwell’s work you see the start of this change in attitude towards design, art and other related themes. Similarly is the change in attitude to-wards design since the creation of the Computer. Ralph Osterhout explains “Today the level of expectation in a child, let alone a grade school, or a high school, or college student is so extraordinarily high, they expect magic. I mean how are you gonna thrill a young person when no one even thought of letting a person have a pager initially for fear a pedophile might get them, to now you have kids that have their own phone and they all can call Mom and Dad with the push of a button? And there’s so much technology suffused in products that the expectation of not only children, but adults is so enormous. They expect a huge promise. If you don’t deliver it to them, they’re bored, and they are disinter-ested in whatever it is. So, the sad part is you no longer can enchant a child or a teenager, or young adults, with something that’s just a nice idea. They’re so suffused with sophisticated graphics and literally animations and amazing sound that they expectation is so great it’s almost impossible to really enrapture anybody today.” The interesting point that Osterhout makes is that with the change in technology; has come the change in our attitude towards design. The expectation we have of everything is much higher meaning that to a normal person, advertisement for example needs to be ‘sophis-ticated’ with sounds, moving images and flashing lights before we begin to look and make sense of it. A clear example of this shift in consumer expectation is visible

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travelling

Stories can be told in many different ways, in primitive life, cavemen used to sit around fires and share stories of the wondrous beasts and dangerous gods that they believed in. Times have changed and with that is the way we communicate; we no longer take time to say ‘good morning’ with a handshake; its become ‘Hi’ with nod of the head. Similarly, our language has changed, in prior eras, without technology, communication was done by word of mouth; now days a text message con-taining drastically abbreviated words such as ‘LOL’ and ‘BRB’. Is this because we live in a fast paced society where any time that can be saved to do something else is a necessity? This change in western society has made an impact on art and the use of photography as the use of images have also been abbreviated and cut down in order to keep up with the pace of people in todays society. Nowadays has a single image that is bold and hits you with its conceptual image or is relatively simple to understand quickly has become the key to a good photo? As the old cliche goes… is a picture really worth ‘a thousand words’? Norman Rockwell was a

painter/illustrator of the 20th century. He painted large canvasses of brilliantly created scenes which seem to come alive as you look at them and enter the scenario there depicting. This piece for example; Shuffelton’s Barbershop (April 29th 1950, shows a look through a window of an old and traditional barber shop after hours, only to see that the barber and his quartet are just obscured and playing in the cramped back room. From this image you can build the story of the barber that Rockwell was trying to portray. The barber who is working in a very traditional shop, considering this image was published in the 1950’s the shop has a feel of a much older age, hinting to the age of the barber; the coal stoked stove and somewhat petite and stuffy room pulls you through the window in which you are observ-ing through and places you in the war back room, the fact that the barber is in the cramped back room with his band possibly shows the strong bond he has with his band members who are most probably either very good friends or regular visitors to his shop. Conceptually, Rockwell aimed to make American people reflect on

their culture, here he is doing this by showing how no one would expect the barber to have his own band of cellos and violins if they simply looked in through the window on the way past during there daily routine; pos-sibly also shown by the fact that the band are obscured from vision as its something that would be completely unex-pected. This would have taken hours for Rockwell to painstakingly recreate this scene on canvas, however, the thing that made Rockwell was his covers of The Saturday Evening Post. This piece above was just one of those, a brilliantly creat-ed piece of artwork, con-densed from a huge size

into a small cover for a bimonthly magazine, meaning all the work that Rockwell put into the piece, would often be dismissed and forgotten as the viewer looks at the cover thinking “thats nice” and continues on, opening the magazine and flicking through the different types media

and literature that The Saturday Post published. Lara Cumming’s review of Norman Rockwell’s America in the Dulwich Picture Gallery, London similarly agrees with this view as she says:

“The face on the canvas is emerging as a pencil sketch, not an oil paint-

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ary 2012. kodak

ISO 200 film

shot number 21. ‘oaque trees’. february 2012. kodak ISO 200 film

snow

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ber 34. ‘tob’. february 2012. k

odak ISO

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This was an experiment with the bulb setting on the Diana Mini camera. Since darkness had fallen I wanted to try this technique having seen some of the examples on the lomography website. I set the camera to bulb setting, set the aperture switch to low light and fixxed the camera to a tripod.

Stories can be told in many different ways, in primitive life, cavemen used to sit around fires and share stories of the wondrous beasts and dangerous gods that they believed in. Times have changed and with that is the way we communicate; we no longer take time to say ‘good morning’ with a handshake; its become ‘Hi’ with nod of the head. Similarly, our language has changed, in prior eras, without technology, communication was done by word of mouth; now days a text message con-taining drastically abbreviated words such as ‘LOL’ and ‘BRB’. Is this because we live in a fast paced society where any time that can be saved to do something else is a necessity? This change in western society has made an impact on art and the use of photography as the use of images have also been abbreviated and cut down in order to keep up with the pace of people in todays society. Nowadays has a single image that is bold and hits you with its conceptual image or is relatively simple to understand quickly has become the key to a good photo? As the old cliche goes… is a picture really worth ‘a thousand words’? Norman Rockwell was a painter/illustrator of the 20th century. He painted large canvasses of brilliantly created scenes which seem to come alive as you look at them and enter the scenario

there depicting. This piece for example; Shuffelton’s Barbershop (April 29th 1950, shows a look through a window of an old and traditional barber shop after hours, only to see that the barber and his quartet are just obscured and playing in the cramped back room. From this image you can build the story of the barber that Rockwell was trying to portray. The barber who is working in a very traditional shop, considering this image was published in the 1950’s the shop has a feel of a much older age, hinting to the age of the barber; the coal stoked stove and somewhat petite and stuffy room pulls you through the window in which you are observ-ing through and places you in the warm feeling room that is the barber shop. Then you see the band in the back room, the fact that the barber is in the cramped back room with his band possibly shows the strong bond

he has with his band members who are most probably either very good friends or regular visitors to his shop. Conceptually, Rockwell aimed to make American people reflect on their culture, here he is doing this by showing how no one would expect the barber to have his own band of cellos and violins if they simply looked in through the window on the way past during there daily routine; possibly also shown by the fact that the band are obscured from vision as its something that would be completely unexpected. This would have taken hours for Rockwell to painstakingly recreate this scene on canvas, however, the thing that made Rockwell was his covers of The Saturday Evening Post. This piece above was just one of those, a brilliantly created piece of artwork, condensed from a huge size into a small cover for a bimonthly magazine, meaning all the work that

shot number 35. ‘dog’. february 2012.

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odak ISO

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shot number 39. ‘attack dog’. february 2012.

Rockwell put into the piece, would often be dismissed and forgotten as the viewer looks at the cover thinking “thats nice” and continues on, opening the magazine and flicking through the different types media and literature that The Saturday Post published. Lara Cumming’s review of Norman Rockwell’s America in the Dulwich Picture Gallery, London similarly agrees with this view as she says:

“The face on the canvas is emerging as a pencil sketch, not an oil painting: a drawing of Norman Normal, as he was joshingly known. Rockwell has used paint to imitate pencil; down below, his name is lettered in up-per and lower case, just as it appeared on the Saturday Evening Post covers that made him America’s favorite 20th-century artist. Right down to the printed “signa-ture”, in fact, the self-portrait on the canvas is turning into a cover. It is a sweet but sad conceit, Rockwell’s modest way of showing his readers that he was actu-ally a painter. For most people thought he produced pictures, not paintings, and many still do, downgrading Rockwell’s popular art to nothing more than sentimen-tal picture-making.”

Here the writer shows how Rockwell’s brilliantly cre-ated pieces of art become mere images or ‘pictures’ as

shot number 39. ‘attack dog’. february 2012.

shot n

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ber 36. ‘oaque trees’. febru

ary 2012.

shot number 26. ‘deep snow’. february 2012. kodak ISO 200 film