I had read about lomography a few times while stumbling through the internet. I didn’t pay much attention to it then. A few days ago I found some really old photographs that I had taken with my Hot Shot Camera. This camera was pretty basic with really nothing in it, especially the lens which used to generally spoil the edges of the shot. Combine that with the 110 mm film that it used to work with, which was also not very fast, you had pictures that looked like they had been taken a few years ago, even on the day that they were developed.

It was then that the few lomography articles that I had read came to mind. I don’t think that I will go and and buy a Lomo camera any time soon, but the effect that the substandard parts of a lomo camera generate can look really nice in some cases. I am not a big fan, because most shots just look like they are badly shot, but some of them can really stand out. It was for these few shots that I decided to experiment with some of my existing pictures and apply lomo effects to them using the GIMP.

The GIMP Plugin Registry has its fair collection of plugins that you can readily install and start using to get your desired lomography effect, but I would also recommend doing it manually from one of the many GIMP tutorials available online. There is also a short You Tube video showing the steps for GIMP if you like that knid of stuff. The official lomography website is also available if you wish to navigate through a really difficult to navigate website with small fonts and clickable areas. That site really needs a redesign. However you can go there and see some examples of real lomo pictures taken with real lomo cameras.

So I used the GIMP plugin featured in the above link and came up with a couple of lomo fakes. Hey if anyone wants to share some real lomo pictures then I would be glad to see them. My first attempts are below.

The next before and after set.

More to come, but like I said, I’m not really too interested it this. Maybe if I got a real lomo camera! Hmm…