Lomography and lomography-styled photography has been growing in popularity in the past year or two, largely spurred by smartphone apps that make it possible for virtually anyone to mimic the style.
Lomography is characterized by its inherent low-fi quality. Lomographic images often have strange light effects (caused by extra light leaking into the camera body and exposing the film in the original Lomo cameras), ultra-satured colors, blurring, vignetting, and other imperfections generally avoided in traditional photography.
The other main feature of real lomography is the spontaneous, spur-of-the-moment style of images produced.
These “imperfections” are what give lomography its unique look and style. As already mentioned, apps like Hipstamatic for the iPhone and Vignette for Android make it easy to achieve these effects without special equipment. For purists, the original cameras are less expensive than a traditional SLR, but getting film developed can be a challenge (if you don’t do it yourself) now that digital is the norm.
A Brief History of Lomography
The original lomography cameras were created by Russian state-owned LOMO (or Leningrad Optical & Mechanical Union) in St. Petersburg. They produced the first Russian camera in 1930. The LOMO LC-A Compact Automat camera was first produced in 1984, and became the centerpiece of the company’s activities.
Another company often considered to have a similar aesthetic is Holga, which is a common 120mm toy camera made in China. It produces the same kind of low-fidelity images that Lomo cameras are famous for, and sometimes the term lomo is used interchangeably to refer to either type of camera.
The term Lomography is a trademark of Lomographische AG, an Austrian company that caters to the global lomographic photography community. They are the exclusive distributors of the Lomo LC-A cameras outside of the Soviet Union. They also sell various accessories related to lomography, and publish a magazine about the subject.
Tutorials and Actions
If you don’t have a Lomo camera or one of the smartphone apps, there are easy Photoshop tutorials you can follow to create the same effects, as well as a handful of actions for even faster lomo processing.
Tutorial: How to Make Digital Photos Look Like Lomo Photography
This is a complex and in-depth tutorial from Digital Photography School, though it’s also easy to follow. The results are stunning.
Tutorial: Lomography
This simple tutorial shows how to create stunning lomography-style images in six easy steps.
Tutorial: Cross-Processed Lomo Effect – Photoshop Tutorial
This tutorial from Abduzeedo breaks down the lomography effect process in eight easy steps.
Tutorial: Lomography
Photoshop Box offers this great lomography effect tutorial with eight steps, resulting in a slightly washed-out final image.
Tutorial: Photoshop Lomo: A Beginner’s Guide
This tutorial from .net Magazine is very in-depth and gives a complete eighteen-step process for creating beautiful lomo effects.
Tutorial: Photoshop Tutorial: Getting that Great X-PRO Lomo Look
TutorialBlog offers this great lomo tutorial that includes plenty of keyboard shortcuts.
Action: 10 Photoshop Lomo Actions to Funky-Cool Your Photos
This set of ten Photoshop actions from ABDPBT Tech creates a variety of lomography-style effects quickly and easily. Actions are great for batch-processing a bunch of photos.
Action: Lomography Photoshop Action
This Photoshop action creates a number of adjustment layers that you can then tweak for each individual photo to get the best results.
Action: Free Stuff: Lomography Photoshop Action
This action, from The Blue Fishbowl, creates a simple lomo effect for CS2.
Action: Free Lomography Photoshop Action Pack
This action package is from PhotographyBB, and creates a number of adjustment layers including a vignette layer, sharpness layer, and curves layer, among others.
Examples
Fake Lomography
Image Credit: Joseph Ou
Lomography
Image Credit: Lukas Haider
Lomography
Image Credit: Cecilia Temperli
Lomography Diana F+ 35mmBack
Image Credit: Sasha, Harmony, Alex
Lomography
Image Credit: Lukas Haider
Lomography
Image Credit: Lukas Haider
Lomography
Image Credit: Ralf-Juergen
Lomography
Image Credit: Stuart
LOMOGRAPHY: Cadeau
Image Credit: Marc-Andre Martin
Lomography
Image Credit: Fabio Luiz C. de Mattos
Lomography – Amsterdam
Image Credit: Vinicius Fadul
Lomography Collaboration (Malaysia & United States)
Image Credit: en. shahdi
Lomography
Image Credit: Hannahgopa
FishEye 3
Image Credit: Alex Grechman
South Beach
Image Credit: Phillip Pessar
Spectra Vision!
Image Credit: Cameron Russell
Stalagtites from another Dimension
Image Credit: Cameron Russell
Palm Door
Image Credit: Cameron Russell
Lomo Dahlia
Image Credit: Tony Alter
Lomo
Image Credit: Niek Beck
Sky Corner
Image Credit: Cameron Russell
Rail
Image Credit: Fadhirul Fitri Jamsari
img160
Image Credit: Fadhirul Fitri Jamsari
Lomo Church of Christ in Three Oaks, Michigan
Image Credit: Kevin Dooley
Playing with Lomoapp
Image Credit: Thobias Vemmenby
P1290256
Image Credit: Elfie McGlip
P1270605
Image Credit: Elfie McGlip
Untitled
Image Credit: Audrey Stanton
photo.jpg
Image Credit: Pravin Premkumar
Bled
Image Credit: Juanma
Tchau Guara
Image Credit: Nadja Bium
MKE Lakefront
Image Credit: Jessica F.
We’re Trying to Reach the Sky
Image Credit: Thanakrit Gu
Bogenschussbahn und Wikingerlager
Image Credit: Christian Walther
Untitled
Image Credit: Marcos Mora
Nilgiris
Image Credit: Alosh Bennett
P1070161a
Image Credit: Andy Orin
image5
Image Credit: Elfie McGlip
Always on the Run
Image Credit: Carlos Varela
Cow Munching
Image Credit: allielovestea
Sun Lomo
Image Credit: Paul Carroll
Untitled
Image Credit: BIAU Guillaume
Science Infuse
Image Credit: BIAU Guillaume
Rainbow
Image Credit: BIAU Guillaume
Untitled
Image Credit: BIAU Guillaume
Death Valley Bottom
Image Credit: Paul Joseph
47590036
Image Credit: dimhap
47590011
Image Credit: dimhap
47590034
Image Credit: dimhap
photo.jpg
Image Credit: Pravin Premkumar
Written exclusively for WDD by Cameron Chapman.
Have your own take on the lomography movement? Or tips and tutorials you’d like to share? Let us know in the comments!