The Lomo Effect

Well it's been a few weeks so I thought I'd better come up with something for the blog and, so, I've investigated the Lomo style of photography and come up with a little guide on how to take a bog standard snap and give it a bit of the old Lomo magic. 

For those of you that haven't heard of it I should probably describe what the Lomo style, or Lomography, actually is. I guess it's actually two things; one of which is easy to define, the other of which isn't. The easy one is the physical look of the photos; there tends to be a vignette (darkening at the corners), the colours are very rich (due to the use of slide film and the common practice of cross processing the negatives) and the quality is generally low with blurriness, poor exposure and even light leaks frequently featuring. Most of these properties, normally avoided at all costs by most photographers but sought out by the lomographer, are down to the very low build quality of the lomo camera. Think 1980s, Russia, plastic.

The element that is more difficult to pin down is the style and composition. Perhaps a good place to start would be with the motto of the movement: Don't Think, Just Shoot. Although it could easily be confused with the motto of the American military it is actually a style encompassed by The Ten Golden Rules of Lomography as laid out on their website. These include such adages as Take Your Camera With You Everywhere You Go, and, Lomography Is Not An Interference In Your Life But A Part Of It. Basically, they try to encourage you to break every traditional rule of photography that ever existed. The Rule of Thirds would be anathema to a lomographer. I highly recommend a look at their site to get more of a feel for this unusual brand of photography; you'll probably either like it or you wont.

The question is: how did such an odd, counter-intuitive and niche movement even get started, nevermind become an international phenomenon? It all started as recently as 1992 when a group of Viennese art students came across an old Lomo camera whilst on a tour in Prague. They found it in an old camera shop and used it in a very casual kind of way, often not aiming, shooting from the hip and generally just mucking about. Upon returning home and developing the film they were charmed by the "unique, colourful and sometimes blurry images" that were produced. Interest amongst friends and family rapidly grew and the following year they founded a society in honour of the strange new camera. The camera in question was a Lomo LC-A Compact Automat, produced some ten years previous in the USSR. The build quality of the device was.... well, there was no build quality; but this leant itself perfectly to the students shooting style.

There was a problem, however; with the fall if the USSR also came the end of the production of the camera and the prospect of a ready supply of the student's new favourite toy. Undaunted, the students flew to St. Petersburg, where the Lomo factory was located, to make a deal for tax breaks so as to make it economically viable to continue production. They successfully got the special permission required from the mayor of the city, a very amiable and friendly chap, one V. Putin. The rest, as they say, is Lomography. Production has since shifted to China and production continues to this day; the future of Lomography seems secure and Lomo cameras remain cheap and affordable for all to try. The film is now the increasingly expensive part.

But what if you don't want to faff about with film and developing and such like and just want to create the same effect using your existing DSLR and a bit of canny processing? Well, I'll show you how - so long as you intend to use Adobe Elements, although many applications are broadly similar these days. Those of you not interested in the technical parts can just skip to the pretty picture at the bottom.

The picture we're going to start with is no great shakes. The exposure isn't great, I should have got my neutral density filters out, the sky is overexposed and there's some lens flare; but as we're aiming for the Lomo style none of this should matter, if anything it'll help. So there are two main things we need to do here; create a vignette and achieve a cross-processing effect by increasing saturation and contrast. There is more than one way to do each of these steps including just clicking through the guided Lomo Camera Effect wizard, but where would the fun be in that?

There are two easy ways to create a vignette. The first is to simply go to Filter>Correct Camera Distortion and use the sliders in the vignette tool, which are normally used to remove a vignette, not to create one. I'd normally go for somewhere around -40 to -50 but it's totally up to you.

The second way is a little more involved but gives you more control. Take the Lasso tool and, having selected a feathering level of, shall we say, between 100-200 pixels, draw a vaguely circular shape in the middle of the photo. Again, we're not aiming for perfection here. We want to alter the outside of this circle not the inside and so you need to click Select>Inverse. Now create a Levels layer and slide both the shadows and the midpoint markers to the right a little, this will add to the vignette effect. I actually prefer to use a combination of these two methods to make my vignettes.

That's the vignette sorted but now we need to work on the distinctive colour palette of lomography; again, there are a couple of ways to go about this and I like to use a combination of each. First up: colour curves. Click on Enhance>Adjust Colour>Adjust Colour Curves... (yes, it really does have the three little dots after it). Here you are presented with a straight diagonal line on a grid. The left hand side of the grid represents dark colours, the left hand side highlights, and the middle is the midtones. There are several preset options available but you can also drag the points on the line to warp it. Moving any given point on the line either up or down will make the corresponding band of colour more or less intense. We want to make the curve look like an S; this will have the effect of making the highlights brighter and the dark parts darker, i.e. increasing contrast. If your line looks something like the one in my example below then you're on the right track. Press okay when you're happy with the effect achieved.

I would also recommend increasing the saturation, this will help to achieve the cross processing effect that is so synonymous with the Lomo style. To do this you can either click on Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Hue/Saturation... or simply click on the button with the diagonally divided circle on it on the right hand side and select Hue/Saturation... Use the slider for Saturation to give your colours a bit of a boost. For a 'normal' photo I wouldn't want to push this much past the mid teens, but for the Lomo style you can probably get away with numbers in the 30s, 40s or even higher depending on the photo.

In the same way that you got your Hue/Saturation... layer you can now select a new Brightness/Contrast... layer. Here, I wouldn't say that the Brightness has to go one way or the other, this really depends on what look you want to achieve with any given individual photo, but I would recommend increasing the contrast a little.

Lastly, I would say it's worth while putting a Fill layer in. To do this, select Layer>New Fill Layer>Solid Colour... Call the new layer whatever you like or leave it as the default and click Ok. This should default to a layer of pure black and you will completely lose the picture you have so carefully created. Fortunately it is only hiding behind the black layer and we now have to blend the two together to reveal the finished product. Click Ok again. At the top right in the Layers panel you will have a drop down box with various different blending options; I would recommend Soft Light or Hue or Saturation and an Opacity of something like 30-50%. This should really help bring about that cross processing look. Cross processing, by the way, is where you develop film using non-standard chemicals. There are two main film types; standard 35mm and Colour Slide film. Each of these sets has their own chemicals used in their development, C41 for 35mm and E6 for Colour Slide film; however, lomographers noticed that you can get some really cool results if you swap these up. As I understand it the more common option is to use Colour Slide film and process it with 35mm chemicals.

That's about it. With any luck you should now have a photo worthy of the annals of Lomography, or at least something that looks a little old timey; you can see my effort below. None of the techniques I have mentioned here are set in stone; indeed, that would go against the whole freestyle notion that made Lomo popular in the first place. The idea is not to be constricted by the traditional norms, to break the rules and not to worry about the consequences. As Rule #10 of Lomography says: Don't worry about any rules.

Textures

Taken at a friends wedding (not that of those mentioned), the effect is only slightly marred by the fact that I lent the cards against a pint of lager

In an attempt to not be quite such an old fuddy duddy all the time I have been experimenting of late with digital post processing of photos. Whilst the gold standard of photography will always be to get the picture as perfect as possible in camera, more often than not something somewhere will go slightly awry. Cue PhotoShop, Lightroom, Aperture or any other of a multitude of suites out there to help process and correct your shortcomings. I have PhotoShop Elements which is basically a stripped down version of the market-dominating behemoth that retains much of the functionality of it's big brother but at about a fifth of the price.

This is one of my favourite shots from my trip to Porto. The old terracotta roofs really lend themselves to the ageing process

As I read about, practice and learn more about photography the more it seems to be the case that pretty much everyone fiddles with their pics to some degree. Those that literally never make any adjustments seem to be regarded as almost puritanical, looked on slightly askance as if they're some sort of idiot savant - brilliant, but slightly odd, and not in a good way. They're bracketed away with those people who will spend two days travelling to a location but always restrict themselves to just one perfect exposure which they'll spend literally all day composing. These people produce superb work but normal people shouldn't, couldn't, be expected to be the same way. 

Another thing that learning more about photography has done is give me the ability to spot more and more modifications in photos wherever I see them be it at bus stops, galleries or in books of fine art photography. I'm not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing yet. On the one hand it can provide inspiration and ideas about new techniques that I might be able to put into practice, but on the other hand an image that previously would have just made me say, "Wow", can now occasionally have me thinking the equivalent of, "I can see the strings". On balance it's probably a good thing. The line between too much modification and just right is entirely subjective. The full spectrum can be seen from fine art puritans at one end to fashion magazines, that seem to deal in works of complete fiction, at the other.

This is the first texture I ever attempted. I was trying to make it look like an old photo that had been printed and mistreated over many years

And so it is that I have decided to play around with these things; obviously the examples here are in no way subtle, this is more than a simple Levels or Curves adjustment. I've deliberately given them all a very aged and antiqued feel; the affect is achieved by blending in a texture layer and the addition of a little vignetting. Different textures will obviously have different effects, and not all photos will lend themselves to such modification so the selection of the two layers you're going to combine is quite important. 


Before I tell you how to go about creating these sorts of photos I'd better let you know where you can get some textures. Luckily, there are lots of very nice people out there who let you have them for free. Go to Flickr and search for 'free textures', this should throw up plenty of results. There are literally hundreds if not thousands  of them there but do please make sure that they are available for use. Check to see if there is a Creative Commons license for the image and if the creator has any conditions of use. Often they will just request a courtesy thank you or a link back to the original texture or something along those lines. There are also good websites dedicated solely to such things like CG Textures. Sometimes you will find that a good photo and a good texture won't necessarily go together; the colours and tones involved and the type of effect you're trying to achieve will all need to be considered in selecting both your starting image and the texture you want to combine it with.

From Vietnam, the old skool bike and conical hat add to the sense of times past

I'm going to end with a quick description of how to go about blending the texture layer into the image you've selected. Unless you own Elements or PhotoShop and intend to actually do this you can probably stop reading and carry on with your life. For the rest of you: sit up straight and pay attention, I won't tolerate slacking. Fortunately, this is actually all quite easy; instructions are for PhotoShop Elements although I'd imagine it's pretty similar for the grown up version. Here's how:

- First up, import your two images into the Elements Organiser and then into the Workspace ready for editing.

- You need your two images to be the same size so go to your photo and click Image>Resize>Image Size. Make a note of the pixel height and width of your image and then go to your texture, follow the same command path and enter in the figures. Make sure you have Resample Image ticked. Your texture will now be stretched or shrunk to the same size as your photo.

- On your texture click Select>All and then press Ctrl+C, go back to your photo and press Ctrl+V. The texture will now appear over the top of your photo as a new Layer.

- It's not really necessary but if you like you can rename the layer to distinguish it from others you might use later by right clicking on the layer in the Layers box on the right hand side and selecting Rename Layer.

- As things stand the texture layer is completely opaque so now we begin the blending process. Making sure you have your texture layer selected on the right hand side (as opposed to Background) simply click the drop down box where it says Normal and select one of the myriad blending options.

- Pick any you like but the most useful will likely be Overlay, Soft Light or Hard Light. Once you have one you like you can also modify the percentage opacity by clicking the drop down box.

- The texture you have selected may have a vignette already in it but if not then adding one in can really contribute to the sense of it being an old photo. To do this select the Background layer and then click Filter>Correct Camera Distortion. This tool is normally used to remove vignettes but in this case we're going to use it to add one in.

- On the right just move the sliders for Amount and Midpoint around until you achieve the effect you're after. You should be careful at this point as this alteration is a permanent one that affects the background of your image. Unless you're certain of what you're doing it is prudent to save a copy beforehand so that you can always go back to it if you mess things up. This is a good tip just in general for when you are playing about with your images.

- For some reason this renames the Background layer as Layer 0. You can either ignore this or rename it again.

That pretty much does it. If you like you can add in a standard Curves or Levels layer to lighten/darken the general palette of the image. Save the image as either a TIFF file or PhotoShop file to preserve all the layers in case you ever want to go back to them later on. You should also save all new images as a JPEG in case you ever want to e-mail them or upload them somewhere, like to an exciting blog that you write.

And that's that; give it a try and let me know how you get on. As I wrote those steps I made a new image to make sure I didn't miss anything out; the texture is most clear in the previously light blue sky and I've applied a pretty heavy vignette to the corners to demonstrate the effect. Here it is:

Ta dah!