Lomography started in the early 1990s when two Viennese students discovered a Kompakt Automat camera. They shot off rolls of film without worrying about the conventional rules of photography.  They were delighted with the over saturated, slightly blurry and candid results the camera produced. Thus an international photographic movement (and a company to feed it) was born.

As part of the movement, the so-called ‘10 Golden Rules of Lomography” were developed. Briefly these are:

1. Take your Lomo everywhere
2. Use it any time, day or night
3. Treat Lomography as part of your life, not as an interference
4. Get as close as possible to your subject
5. Don’t stop to think – just do it
6. Be fast
7. You don’t have to know beforehand what is on your film
8. Or afterwards
9. Try to shoot from the hip
10. Don’t worry about rules

Now, I don’t use analogue cameras, I’m a purely digital type of guy, but I think that these rules can apply equally to digital photography as true Lomography. Digital cameras are getting smaller all the time, and just about every phone these days has a built-in camera so it’s easy to take a camera with you wherever you go. Digital cameras also encourage experimentation. You can fire off hundreds of shots of whatever you fancy from different angles and using using different settings without worrying about using-up all your film or the cost of processing.

The experimentation doesn’t stop with taking the pictures either. Once you have a few shots you like you can import them into your digital darkroom of choice and then the playing can really begin – more about which in later posts.

Smart phones have also caught on to the Lomo craze.  There are several apps available for whatever phone you use. I happen to own a HTC Desire which uses the Android OS, so it is Android apps that I’ll be covering in this blog.

The picture above was taken with an app called Vignette which is available from the Android Marketplace.  The free version only handles lores pictures so it’s worth splashing out £2.99 for the full version which will take photos up to the full resolution of your phone’s camera.

To emulate the Lomo experience, I set the effects and frame style to random and used the Blind Mode, which blanks the screen so you have to guess about such niceties as composition etc.  I fired off several shots and this was my favourite. You can see a higher resolution version on my Flickr stream.

In essence, this is what Elstruthio’s Stuff will be about; experimenting, playing and having fun with photography.

Technorati Tags: lomography, rules, vignette