State Street Bank - Canarf Wharf

Canada Square

Canary Wharf Somewhere.

Canada Square

West India Quays

West India Quays

West India Quays

Black-and-white taken with Neopan 400 rated at 1600 developed in ID-11,  Chinon CE-5 and Super Travenar 28mm f/1.28. Colour with Pentax K100D and Chinon 50mm f/1.7, with a Hoya polarizing filter. Click for full size.

With worldwide distribution rights bought from LOMO plc, the Lomographic Society possesses the monopoly over a product which was designed to be a ‘people’s camera’ in the Soviet Union. This camera which was designed to be ubiquitous is sold for £180+, and what do you get? A metal bodied though still cheaply-made and refurbished USSR throwback designed to be faulty. The fact that the vignetting of the lens is marketed as a benefit is completely and utterly offensive to anyone with an sound understanding of optics: the entire point of having a frame to fill with a lens is that the frame is filled, not cut off by bad optical design.

As for the concept of people taking snapshots with crap cameras: that is something I have no problem with. The lomography lot, however, have found a marvellous way to market their overpriced wares: a set of ‘golden’ rules for their practice; a set of rules which by their very nature require you to spend more money on film. And of course, the only way to get the ‘best’ results is to buy their heinously overpriced expired film; because, you know, the light leaks just aren’t enough for completely and utterly degrading the picture which you are taking.

Lomography’s Golden Rules

1. Take your camera everywhere you go – this is a rule that I like, I’ll concede: take more pictures, you’ll improve in the craft.
2. Use it any time – day and night - this makes sense,  taking more pictures leads to less focus on photographic gear and more pictures. It’s another than I’m a fan of.
3. Lomography is not an interference in your life, but a part of it – and here the downward spiral begins: there must be few phrases which could make out the ‘art collective’ to be a cult as this one.
4. Try to shoot from the hip - no, hipsters: you are not Henri Cartier-Bresson. Yes, he did shoot from the hip, but he had an innate sense of what would work in terms of composition: most people with Holgas probably can’t work out focus and composition mentally.
5. Approach the subjects of your lomographic desire as close as possible - now things start to get a little too One Hour Photo for my liking: this is pretty close to stalking. Again, it’s a method of keeping those who would fall into thefold of the Lomographic Society as loyal customers: there’s no such thing as a telephoto lens for these cameras, so telling these people that close-up is the only way is going to prevent their questioning of there being ‘another way.’ They also espouse rhetoric of of close-up shots being the only way to capture natural emotion in people: I’d argue that a 135mm lens from across a street is more likely to capture natural expressions given the impossibility of the subject seeing you and reacting to your photography.
6. Don’t think - yes, let’s just shoot, shoot and shoot without thought for artistic composition and spend all of our money with the Lomographic Society on more film.
7. Be fast – ah, I like this one: I don’t like to miss moments of what could be great photography.
8. You don’t have to know beforehand what you captured on film – ‘no, because you can always buy more from us.’
9. Afterwards either – I’ll agree with this one as well: the mystique in photographs can add to them. A little bit of abstract is alright.
10. Don’t worry about any rules - WHY PUBLISH THE PREVIOUS NINE, THEN. This is, by far, the least agreeable one: if you want to take (objectively) good photographs, you have to pay at least some reverence to, no matter in how fleeting a measure, the more traditional rules of artistic composition.

I hope to God that someone from the Lomographic Society is reading this and just thinking ‘yeah, he got us right.’

I'm Hungry, by *belajarmotret

Indonesia has never struck me as a hotbed for the arts, but I suppose that nothing of much value can ever be extrapolated from one’s origins. DeviantArt user belajarmotret finds beauty in the most simplistic of macro photography juxtaposed with extremely short depths of field to create nature photography which refrains from being either pretentious or cliché. Far from a one trick pony, photographs such as Cityscape 1 show an eye for landscapes most finely tuned: light-sources both distant and close are combined to form a sense of depth so often flattened by lesser photographers lacking an eye for the perception of the interaction of light and shadow to create a perceivable near and far.

His work shows so much more energy and potential than the typical Canon EOS 350D target market: there’s a certain maturity behind the imaging; an eye for something more than that which is obviously apparent. Traffic “Light” shows a wonderful appreciation for the traditional ‘rules’ of composition not only of photography but of the more traditional arts. The rule of thirds is executed perfectly here, in a manner in which does not imply a mathematical precision, but has the psuedo-symmetrical aspects so appealing to the human eye. The light mentioned in the title falls exactly upon the intersection of two guidelines: it’s either wonderful coincidence or the illustration of a great photographic mind at work. His portraiture is brilliance itself: expressive and emotive, with even the more ‘modelling’ shots not looking choreographed.

1) Vignetting.

Vignetting example (from Wiki Commons)

This, frankly, never works. The ‘point’, if it can be stated as such, is supposedly to draw attention to the subject by darkening the outer areas of the image. Surely, I can’t be the only person to find this approach cheap? If you need to accentuate the subject in such a manner, it’s really not a suitable thing to be taking photographs of, surely? This is an edit which can only be used in an attempt to salvage a bad photograph, if it’s not being used purely because you saw somebody else do it and it ‘looked cool.’

Apparently, some use it because of the ‘vintage’ or ‘timeless’ (what does that word even mean, anyway?) feel that it is supposed to give. Personally, I can’t see why people would want this: the vignette is a throwback to the days of poor lens manufacture more than anything else, and only really occurs naturally in modern equipment if a lens hood too large for a wide-angle lens is used.

Leave the past which deserves to be such there.

2) Rounded Corners.

Rounded Corners Example (from Flickr somewhere)

This, I flat out do not understand: here is an increasing popular ‘effect’ which brings absolutely nothing of value to the image. I don’t even think it to be an aesthetically pleasing ‘addition’, and, if anything, little more than a distraction from the subject of the photograph, mired in a sea of hipster ‘photographers’ (read: kids with Daddy’s 350D) keen to reach the highest accolade available to them: DeviantArt’s ‘popular’ pages. I think it’s an attempted emulation of the way in which the edges of photographs do wear away from a point over time, but in digital such an intent seems almost philistine: once again; this is a sort of equipment malfunction which shouldn’t occur (or be emulated) in this day and age. Maybe I’m too much of a sucker for the rectangular 3:2 ratio photographs which full-frame dSLRs and 35mm gives.

3) Incorrect White Balance.

Example of incorrect white balance, from cambridgeincolour.com's White Balance Tutorial

Excepting, of course, sunrises/sunsets and the like which are integrally not white balanced, there’s no excuse for the colour balance of a digitally recorded photograph being wrong: it’s a three-click fix in Photoshop, and it’s just such an error of either laziness or ignorance that it never fails to annoy me.

What’s worse for me is when it’s clear to see that the white balance has been altered in order to (as the artist would like to think) convey a mood; taking a shift towards blue hues to present a ‘cold’ atmosphere being an obvious example. This is such a specious move, once again, which is endemic of a lack of creativity: if the mood of a photograph is to be cold, the subject matter alone should be able to convey this. The industrial, the run-down, subdued light, visibly sad human subjects: these things would provide a far better method of showing cold moods than the clichéd colour shift.

4) Horrible Borders

Hellsinki by *CuriousCorn (found at DeviantART)

I love the photograph to the right; I really do: it’s a photograph of a non-stereotypical sunset over the beauty that is Helsinki with tasteful HDR, but I can’t help but be repulsed by the simple repugnant border than the photographer (*CuriousCorn of DeviantArt) has decided to apply. From his portfolio, it’s a mistake he makes time and time again: the border is far too think and the font chosen not nearly subtle enough. The 1/2 pixel orange border seems to make the image seem less striking: the colour in the photograph is subtracted from by this addition.

5) Excessive Use of Photoshop Texture Filters

Something from the Flickr 'Photoshop is not a Dirty Word' pool.

There’s a point when photography ends and digital art begins: since the proliferation of Photoshop into the hands of those who really wouldn’t be able to legitimately afford it, this line seems to be ignored. There comes a point when you abstract an image from its original state so greatly that it ceases to be what it originally was. Overlaying two images on top of one another is a conventional, age-old darkroom trick, and one which can provide results which would otherwise be nigh-on impossible to recreate – this I have no issue with, and I like to explore myself. But when other elements (such as heavy brushing) become involved, most of the work is being done in post-process, and not by the combination of camera and photographer.

Annoying why? Purely because they define this art as photography and I’m a pedant.

6) Bad HDR.

Awful HDR from Flickr somewhere.

There’s a time and a place for HDR. The shame is, many people are not aware of when and where it’s really going to work and how to pull it off right. When done wrong, it just looks horrid; and makes everything look unrealistic and even sickly with saturation of colour. It’s so heinously cartoony in its worst incarnations. People have this seemingly insatiable inclination to apply HDR tonemapping techniques to images which do not have much in the way of Dynamic Range to begin with: it’s a recipe for disaster.

The long and short of this article? Photoshop is the devil in the wrong hands.