I once read from a book ‘Manual cameras are romantic, digital cameras are democratic’. To me it evoked the romanticism of old vintage film and polaroid cameras. Off colors, wrong focus, vignetting effect–these is what traditional photography defines as a ‘bad picture’, but for lomographers, that isn’t the case.

They use these ‘wrong’ settings to their advantage, creating one of a kind photos.

Lomography is a pretty recent type of photography invented by the Lomographic Society, founded in the early nineties in Austria. The founders first experimented with Lomo LC-A, a cheap Russian toy camera. They were taken by the unique, high contrast photos with vignettes and soft focus. The original lomo cameras are the LC-A, Holga, Fisheye, Colorsplash and Supersampler (more on that later…)

According to Lomography.com, There are 10 rules that define ‘lomography’:

1. Take your camera everywhere you go.
2. Use it any time – day and night.
3. Lomography is not an interference in your life, but a part of it.
4. Try to shoot from the hip.
5. Approach the objects of your Lomographic desire as close as possible.
6. Don’t think.
7. Be fast.
8. You don’t have to know beforehand what you captured on film.
9. Afterwards either.
10. Don’t worry about any rules!

Lomography is considered an art movement; as there are now several stores, galleries, groups, competitions and embassies around the world aiming to spread and support the art. The Lomographic Society International headquarters is in Vienna, Austria, but it maintains a website where lomographers can purchase their cameras, interact with fellow photographers, share their photos and techniques, etc.