The LOMO Phenomenon, Digitally?
Back in 1994 I used to work at a photo lab called A&I Color on La Brea Blvd in Los Angeles. There I helped people develop their transparency film (slides and 8x10s mostly). While there I bought a Contax 159M 35mm camera from one of my managers there. It came with 2 Zeiss Lenses a 28mm and 50mm. Since then I have been pretty interested in photography, mostly on the appreciation side, but I still take some of my quality control and technical knowledge with me.
Then one day I discovered the LOMO camera, and all its glory. I bought one on the spot! I don't know how many photos I shot with it, but I can tell you that I spent a lot on processing. It really made an impression on me, the colors are so vivid and saturated. I was a LOMO head! I tried to find a local Lomography group and to my surprise one of my friends was the representative, she was selling the cameras out of her home. Its funny now, the LOMO has this cult following, but at the same time you can go into any Urban Outfitters and get the Action Sampler and Colorsplash cameras for a mere $30 bucks.
The real meat of this post is the photoshop LOMO treatment technique; while browsing around for some sloppy photo edge alpha masks, I found the Kottke.org post on making your own LOMO-esq digital photos. So I HAD to check this out! Well, I tried the tutorial and my results were pretty stunning. I even added the Photo borders I found from my previous sloppy photo edge search.
View: Photo Comparison Left: Untouched / Right: LOMO Treatment
View: Photo Border with LOMO and Kodak 160NC treatment
Download: Borders A Polaroid-like sloppy borders
Download: Borders B Ektachrome and 6x6 Hasselblad-like borders
Download: Borders C Kodak 160 NC transparency film look
Buy: LOMO Lomography Shop