Today’s picture is inspired by Lomography and taken using my iphone using the MoreLomo app.

Snow Day - Lomo-Style

I was first introduced to Lomography when I was at college in the late 90′s. Back then digital photography was very much in it’s infancy and the digital vs film debate was almost worth having……. look how far we’ve come!

Lomography was born out of the discovery of the Lomo Kompakt Automat by two students in Vienna during the early 90′s. The quirky russian camera sparked a new style of artistic experimental photography and unorthodox snapshots. Lomography.com and the The 10 golden rules of Lomography were born and the new style was soon brought the masses. Today there are Lomography Gallery Stores worldwide, a Facebook Page and of course a Flickr Group but nearly twenty years later the rules stay the same :

The 10 golden rules of Lomography

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

These days even getting a regular roll of film processed on the high street is becoming next to impossible so the Lomographic community have looked to digital photography and manipulation for a modern twist.

With nearly every mobile phone having a camera attached and compact cameras manufactures favouring larger LCD screen to viewfinders, it seems that modern ‘snap-shot photographers’ have unwittingly embraced the Golden Rules. You don’t believe me? Just have a look at photos that your friends have posted from new year’s eve!

It’s quite funny to think that the way we took pictures didn’t really change for 100 years…… then at sometime during the Noughties everyone started holding their camera at arms length!

Back to camera phones…….There are already many iPhone apps that offer Lomo-type effects and I’ve mention a couple already my favourite for iPhone Lomography is

MoreLomo by more-thing.com.

Very simple to use and best of all it’s FREE!

I quite like the fact that it doesn’t offer lots of options to change the final result….. very Lomo!

Moving on past camera phones if you fancy trying your hand at creating the Lomo look in Photoshop I’ve included a simple Photoshop Action for you to download Lomo Photoshop Action.

The effect always looks better if you put a vignette on the original shot before hitting the action button. If you’re a Aparture or Lightroom user then it’s fairly simple if you want to do it in photoshop follow these steps:

Creating a Vignette in Photoshop

1. Create a circle just reaching the edges of your framed using the Elliptical Marquee Tool  - Set Feather to about 80px
2. Select>Inverse
3. Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Levels…
4. Adjust the levels by moving the centre arrow to the right from 1.0 to about 0.50
5. Done!

Here’s one I made earlier….

Lomo Action AFTER

Lomo Action BEFORE