iPhography.com: It seems funny to be taking an iPhograph of Lomography :) But now that the iPhone has come so far, will people rebel & go back to film or is there too many advantages (not to mention cost savings) to be had.
I admit that if iPhography hadn’t come along I would have gotten into Lomography. Even my small home town store has started selling them, although at a very premium price. Some of the Lomography cameras in my area are going for well over $250, you can buy a decent little camera for that instead of a plastic or poorly made imitation of what were essentially junk cameras. Now I’m not taking a sideways swipe at Lomography (Ok maybe a little). They have done a fantastic job at marketing these cameras, buying the rights to all of those quirky but poorly made Russian & Chinese cameras that 30 years ago we would have been laughed out of school for having, Putting them in pretty boxes with plastic covers & pretty colours (Like the Barbie of cameras), playing on peoples nostalgia for film & blurry photos, pretending to be a society when in fact its just a company trying to make cash (In Australia all societies, clubs & associations have to be non-profit, or they cant use those words in their name, so I’m sure their name is registered elsewhere) & convincing people that film is cool even though hardly anywhere processes the 120 format film & it’s expensive if they do.
Putting it into persepective, buying & developing & printing that film will be a quarter to a fifth of the actual cost of the camera seems like an expensive proposition given that the sales pitch is “how cool is it that you don’t know what you will get”. Once again I admit I like surprises, It’s one of the reasons i like iPhography, but expensive surprises… I’m not so keen on
But full props to the marketing department of the ‘Lomographic society international’. But the motto “Don’t think, just shoot” sounds more like something the national riffle association would have as a motto & that Americans don’t need drummed into their psyche more than it already is
Having said all that, we know that as good as the iPhone gets, it will still be hard to reproduce the randomness of Lomography, but i’m sure we will soon get close
They have done a fantastic job at building a community / movement around lomography but alas we don’t sell iPhones so they have a much bigger budget than us. There is only so much we can do with a few cents from google adds. But we think limitation is the mother of invention & I’m sure we will find a way to crank up the iPhography movement (first step, saving for a mac that can actually run snow leopard when it comes out) especially with your help
PS Lomography society, we don’t hate you we are just a little jealous & I have a shelf that would look pretty with a display of 1 of each of those cameras, just send to the address on the contact page & I promise to dust them & let all of my house guests play with them to increase my cool street cred & retro stylin’s
Thanks to iphonefoto for inspiring this article
