try something new: lomography

According to the Lomography.com about page, under the section titled, “What the hell is lomography?”, lomography is “an international socio-cultural movement using photography as a creative approach to communicating, absorb and capturing the world. ” I reduce that definition to basically–use photography to capture the world around you, and when we step away from digital we reduce our dependence on machinery or “getting it perfect.”

There are 10 golden rules of lomography, or “lomo” as it is affectionately referred to in shorthand. They are:

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

Now, I dunno about you, but that seems like a pretty fun list. There is a whole range of lomography cameras that one can use as part of creating the funky pictures of this movement. I’ve been having fun with this Blackbird, Fly camera pictured above, my dad’s old Voigtlander Vitoret from the 60′s, an old Polaroid 600 Land Camera (still waiting for my ND filter to arrive so that I can hit the town with my Polaroid SX-70 Land Camera), and a Holga.

Now, lest you worry that this must be expensive, the Holga is only $25 smackers. And developing 120 medium format film can be costly, however, I have learned that Photo Works SF will develop film via their mail order system for only $10 a roll (this is compared to $7.99 a roll at most local drugstores like Walgreen’s or CVS, which work with 35mm film). So the film development is more expensive, but the more you poke around with lomo, the more fun it is. And dare I say, it’s fun just to press a button and turn the crank on the film, and not know quite what is going to come out!

If you’re thinking that you simply don’t want to buy another camera, there’s also the ultimate in lomo style: making your own. You can make a pinhole camera from your home with a few assorted materials, or even buy a set that is flat-packed and ready to be assembled.

Try something new: get out of the digital and into the lomo for the day. And if it’s been awhile since you even dusted off the digital, try something new by getting out and taking pictures, no matter what.

Yup, the voices may come up that this is stupid or there isn’t enough time or what’s the point anyway. Those voices come up. We get to choose what we’ll do in response to them.

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