Lomography Fading?

Probably just not enough lo-fidelity hipsters around to support the sales of film and crappy cameras; the lo-fi aesthetic has been co-opted by digital filter effects from Hipstamatic and to a lesser degree, Instagram, and Snapseed. https://support.google.com/snapseed/

If a person wants lo-fidelity, artsy-fartsy looks, it's dead easy, and CHEAP, to get them from a smartphone's camera using Hipstamatic, or Instagram, or editing them with Snapseed, or whatever. A few years ago, those options did not exist. And now that they do, the technology makes it easy, and basically no-cost, to make unique "authentic" images faster, easier, and in IMMEDIATE, real-time. The new-factor, and the wow-factor of lomography has as I said, been co-opted by digital filter effects.

Buying a $6 roll of film, and then paying a lab $12.99 for 36 decent 4x6 color prints still does not solve the hipster desire to get images onto social media and to get their cool, artsy images SEEN by OTHER people. That's the real issue I think...people want to disseminate their images, share them, send them to many people. With prints, those people need to be within arm's length in order to just see the images, and they cannot take "ownership" of the image unless a copy print is made for each person.

Lest it sound like I am anti-film, I am not. Film is a wonderful medium, and so are printed images. I'm just describing what I see has happened to photography now that there are new,different ways of taking, viewing,editing,and showing,storing, and sharing images. An iPhone with Hipstamatic and some Hipstamatic "lenses" and the various "Hipstamtic film stocks" is also more-versatile than a lomo, with one lens, and only one film emulsion type per roll.
 
Probably just not enough lo-fidelity hipsters around to support the sales of film and crappy cameras; the lo-fi aesthetic has been co-opted by digital filter effects from Hipstamatic and to a lesser degree, Instagram, and Snapseed. https://support.google.com/snapseed/
Yup, you're right. Nowadays everything could be simulated on computers. Soon they gonna put microchips in brains of all of us to simulate, sorry, stimulate politically correct thinking. Future is bright.
 
That's to bad, i have in ha Toronto store a few times just poking around and the staff there were really nice and informative. I had been in other stores and the general census was if you did not know as much as them you were not worth talking to unless you were buying something.. I hope they do well in their next venture.
 
That's to bad, i have in ha Toronto store a few times just poking around and the staff there were really nice and informative. I had been in other stores and the general census was if you did not know as much as them you were not worth talking to unless you were buying something.. I hope they do well in their next venture.
The prices Lomography is putting on theirs stuff is just too much. Even for those hipsters.
 
yeah i was not there to buy anything just to look around, maybe ill go back when they are having their

"were not hip anymore and our insane prices stopped us from selling anything sale: and drop of some mcdonalds applications and squeegees for them
 
Buying a $6 roll of film, and then paying a lab $12.99 for 36 decent 4x6 color prints still does not solve the hipster desire to get images onto social media and to get their cool, artsy images SEEN by OTHER people. That's the real issue I think...people want to disseminate their images, share them, send them to many people. With prints, those people need to be within arm's length in order to just see the images, and they cannot take "ownership" of the image unless a copy print is made for each person.

What's nauseating is that this compulsion to post this stuff to be SEEN by OTHER people, who are also posting this stuff to be SEEN by OTHER people, has to fall into a category being defined as "hip".

From my day, being hip meant you were NOT blindly following the herd. Guess I'm old and marginalized. ;)
 
Buying a $6 roll of film, and then paying a lab $12.99 for 36 decent 4x6 color prints still does not solve the hipster desire to get images onto social media and to get their cool, artsy images SEEN by OTHER people. That's the real issue I think...people want to disseminate their images, share them, send them to many people. With prints, those people need to be within arm's length in order to just see the images, and they cannot take "ownership" of the image unless a copy print is made for each person.

What's nauseating is that this compulsion to post this stuff to be SEEN by OTHER people, who are also posting this stuff to be SEEN by OTHER people, has to fall into a category being defined as "hip".

From my day, being hip meant you were NOT blindly following the herd. Guess I'm old and marginalized. ;)

Same old "herd of independent minds" issue, I guess. Recall part of a Nan Goldin doc where she talked about getting together and partying with her boozed/drugged-out trans-gender demimonde pals and showing slides of her and others' work in the late 70s/early 80s. Sometimes the present just doesn't measure up to the past.

Here's a bit more background on Lomograhy's problems:

Looks like Lomography (company) might be in trouble - Rangefinderforum.com

If Hipster Cameras Are So Popular, Why Did L.A.'s Lomography Stores Close Down? - Los Angeles - Arts - Public Spectacle

I never got the ploy to "brand" film photography. Too many cheap, functioning 35mm SLRs with sharp 50mm lenses to bother with toy cameras, especially after film and processing became pricey and less accessible. Looks like online is where they'll make a stand.
 
To paraphrase an old expression, If all you do is follow the herd, the view never changes.
 
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Buying a $6 roll of film, and then paying a lab $12.99 for 36 decent 4x6 color prints still does not solve the hipster desire to get images onto social media and to get their cool, artsy images SEEN by OTHER people. That's the real issue I think...people want to disseminate their images, share them, send them to many people. With prints, those people need to be within arm's length in order to just see the images, and they cannot take "ownership" of the image unless a copy print is made for each person.

What's nauseating is that this compulsion to post this stuff to be SEEN by OTHER people, who are also posting this stuff to be SEEN by OTHER people, has to fall into a category being defined as "hip".

From my day, being hip meant you were NOT blindly following the herd. Guess I'm old and marginalized. ;)
The point is that by using your retro-y filters and/or lomography cameras, you are laboring under the impression that you are NOT blindly following the herd.

The herd shoots vanilla photographs that are sharp and properly white balanced. Whereas you lead the herd with your avante garde concept of warm filters and light leaks.

Or so you delude yourself into thinking at least. Long enough to fork over some cash for a bad camera. = lomography business plan.



Failing probably for all the reasons Derrel astutely points out.
 
I just bought 2 packs of lomography 120 film bc it was the cheapest I found. Sad to see them go.
 
I just bought 2 packs of lomography 120 film bc it was the cheapest I found. Sad to see them go.

The store is closing but the company is still around and their film should still be available online.
 
The serious photography critics, you know, the people who write for The Luminous Landscape, The Online Photographer, PetaPixel, etc.,etc., often write essays encouraging photography enthusiasts to "build an audience." Alain Briot, of of America's more-respected landcape photographers, often writes about building an audience for one's work. And to an extent, a lot of us have taken some steps on that front, with web sites, blogs, sharing sites, posting images to Facebook, or to TPF, and so on. We have "an audience". On the web, it is easy to deliver images to our audience. And I think that is why digitally edited, "artistic-type" images have become so,so popular; the sheer ease and efficiency of distributing our images to our audience members, no matter where they are.

I follow a few people on Instagram; I admire these peoples' photographic ability, and I enjoy seeing their creativity, their lives, their sense of who they are. And....I get all this from my phone and or my personal computer's internet connection, via Instagram, and also some from Flickr. And some, from Facebook.

Twenty-five plus years ago when I was in college, I took some mass media and communications classes, where we studied the history of mass communication. The, the "next big thing" was supposed to be self-publishing, using Xerography machines! Err, I mean...photocopiers! Can you believe it? Photocopiers! (Please insert your, "OMG, how quaint," comments here.)

Well, turns out nobody really foresaw the development of the internet, from a collection of far-flung university science geeks to...people uploading photos instantly, so that multiple viewers, all across the world, could access those images in real-time. And if the desire of photographers and creative people is to "build an audience", well, the various social media channels really have brought that to within the reach of almost anybody. No need for a printing press! I think the ease of uploading digitally-generated images, with no need for lab time, lab expenses, scanning, and so on, has made the process of how the images are created much less-important than the end results to a certain group of photography artists. Lomography started in the 1990's. The lo-fidelity aesthetic is very charming. It's no surprise that one of Instagram's 16 filters is called Lo-Fi. No, it's not the same thing. But it's not about "the thing" and how it was made, or what kind of camera shot the shot--it is about "building the audience".
 
Idk. I mean, they did raise over $1m on Kickstarter for their all-metal Petzval lens, so maybe they're trying to remain relevant in other ways?
 
I hope they stay around. I have my gripes with Lomography (thirty quid for a hulk of plastic tat? Yeah...no...) but their 35mm film is the cheapest per frame on Amazon.
 

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