Lomography -- Perversion into Imperfection

Long before the birth of compact digital cameras, during the days of the film cameras, the only small and compact camera you could buy was the very expensive Leica compacts. So for most of us, we had to lug around our SLR cameras wherever we went. Then in mid 80s a Russian company by the name of LOMO produced the first ever affordable compact film camera, the LOMO LC-A.

I remembered buying the camera from my local Jessops store in Middlesbrough for around £60, whilst I was a university student, and falling in love with its size and features. It came with a f2.8 lens and allowed you to adjust focus and aperture manually, but the exposure is automatic.

However, having used the camera for a few rolls of film, the initial love affair with the camera slowly turned to despair because the pictures all came out 'wrong'. In those days, we all strived for getting the best quality image possible and the photos from the LOMO camera were anything but.

First of all, the colours were too intense and not natural; the blue sky looked too blue and reds and yellows were too red or too yellow. In other words, the colours were over saturated. In some cases, the overall picture has a blue tint or a green tint. Worse of all, the 4 corners of the photos were noticeably darker than the rest of the picture, known as vignetting.

Needless to say, after holding on for the little camera for a few more years, it went the same way as other electronic gadgets which turned out to be less than useful: in the bin.

But, lo and behold, a few years ago, I started to read about a movement (well, a movement is too strong a word), but more like a passionate community of people referring to a type of photography called LOMOGRAPHY. This is a type of photography where the goal is to produce images that you would have gotten if you have used one of those LOMO cameras, but with using today's latest digital cameras!!

This site is dedicated solely for lomography and you can see what I mean by the saturated colours and vignetting. But if you study the photos more carefully, it's more than just what the pictures look like but more on a particular style of photography. LOMO camera was the very first compact camera that was small enough to put into our jacket pockets that people used to carry it them everywhere and it allowed the average user to take photos in places and situations which otherwise wouldn't have been possible to do so with a standard SLR camera.

I guess like most equipment with a cult appeal, these LOMO cameras now demand a price of £70-£150 in online sites like ebay, for those who want a try their hands at a real film photography.

So, if you already have a digital compact or a DSLR how can you recreate this kind of effect in today's cameras? Well, the only 'camera' that I'm aware of which has this effect built in is the Nokia N8 mobile phone. But no other commercial camera on the market can create this effect on the camera.

So, how can you to turn a normal photo like this

into a lomographic photo

like this?

Here's how to do this in Photoshop.

1. In the window that opens, drag the Amount slider in the Vignette section towards the left, until you start seeing the 4 corners of the image starting to darken.
2. As usual, create a copy of the background image first.
3. With the copy of the background selected, choose Filter-Distort-Lens correction... menu option.
4. Then click OK when you're satisfy with the adjustment.
5. Next, create a new adjustment layer and select Curves.
6. In the Curves dialog, select each of the individual Red, Green and Blue channels and adjust the curves similar to the settings shown below.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
7. Click OK when done.
8. That's all there is to it. But if you want that little extra zing, create a new adjustment layer for Brightness/Contrast and increase the contrast by a small amount to suit.
9. Voila!