Lomo-ization

Lomography is a way of taking pictures whose motto is “don’t think, just shot”. It started with a Russian film-camera called Lomo. Lomo was built out of plastic and produced low-fi pictures with high contrasts, specific saturations, vignetting and blur effects and many other unpredictable artefacts. The good thing was it was cheap. As digital photography developed and the Soviet Union disappeared, Lomo stopped being produced. Until a few years ago. Whereas average people wouldn’t offer a Lomo to their worst enemies, some others enjoyed the fun of taking odd pictures everywhere, always, respecting the 10 Golden Rules (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lomography). Some other cameras can be used too, such as the Holga and the well-known Polaroid (although it seems to me that Polaroid is also used by serial killers for their little souvenirs and by rotten cops for their blackmails). And Lomo’s prices went up to $200. Lomography was born. And it interested me.

So I brainstormed how I could finance the $200 investment. And nothing came up. Then, I remembered about the many apps that could simulate Lomo effect (Instagram for exemple) I could install on my cam smartphone but I realised I didn’t have any smartphone. Times were so tough that I couldn’t afford to make shitty pictures. I had to find a solution and do it by myself.

When you possess a high-class digital camera and when you are a bright photographer it is hard to trash the quality of your pictures. But my SLR is just great and I am not arrogant but stubborn. So I spent the last 48 hours searching the web, working on the many functions and parameters of the software Capture NX2. The first outcome is I learnt quite a few things. Well, here is what I tried:

Increase the contrast of the red layer / Increase the contrast of the high lights of the green layer / Decrease the contrast of the blue layer / Add blur effect / Crop to square shape / Add vignetting effect

Or:

Increase the contrast of the red layer / Increase the green colorization in the shadow / Increase the yellow and red colorization in the high lights (well, at least, I tried it) / Add blur effect / Crop / Add vignetting effect

What appeared to me then, is that shitty pictures are poetic too. The square shape focuses on the sole subject. The blur builds a souvenir effect. The low-fidelity colours excite our imagination. But we never forget that what shows the shitty picture has always existed.