lomography film experiment

I have been interested in lomography for a while now, playing around on the website and dreaming of buying a Diana camera, or somehow getting the lomo look for myself. I hesitated to buy a new thing though, knowing that it’s not about the camera… I tried to figure out what I liked about the lomo look – part of it is the subject matter, random colorful candid shots, and part of it is the contrasty highly saturated color. Not much of it was the “dreamy” out of focus lens effect (although I love vignetting – dark corners and edges) – it was the color and the cross processed effects that were really calling to me.

So I bought some lomography color film, and some slide film that can be processed in negative film chemicals (ie cross processed) to create some interesting color shifts.

I haven’t tried the cross processing yet.

But I did try out the lomography film in my old Pentax SLR camera.

The promise was high contrast and crazy color.

The Star Wars themed Irish wake potluck picnic for the feast day of St Lawrence (patron saint of archivists and librarians) seemed like a good photo shoot opportunity. People were going to dress up, read poetry aloud, eat cold cuts, re-enact a wedding, blow bubbles, play with babies…

Exactly what I was going for!

Out of 36 shots, only a couple were not so good. One was very grainy and poorly exposed because of excessive sun flare. A couple were less flattering than they could be because they emphasized people’s freckles and blemishes.

But all in all, I LOVED what this film did. I can’t wait to try it out again – probably in the city. Street art would be a good subject. I want to run a roll through the Minolta Hi-Matic 5 too. It needs a lot of light – it’s a 100 speed film. I have no idea what it would do indoors with flash. For now I will stick with fun outdoor subjects.

Next experiment: shoot a roll of slide film and try to convince Walgreens (drugstore) to cross process it for me.

Jo:)

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