Ever wondered what Lomography is?
Have you seen Lomo images and wanted to know how to do it? Do you know what Lomo photography is but don’t want to go back to film or buy more cameras?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, read on to learn about Lomo, and how to achieve a hassle-free, totally digital image like it.
What is Lomo?
You’ve probably heard of this term or its more colloquial name Lomography. It became very trendy over the last decade, and there are even workshops, contests and more dedicated to it.
It refers to a style of photography made with a particular brand of camera from Austria called Lomo. Thus, the name of the technique comes from the camera brand. Different models create a different kind of image.
What is Lomography?
Regardless of the model of camera, the make is mostly plastic including the lens.
Sometimes they have light leaks and allow very little control over the settings. Therefore, the results are fun and unpredictable. While technically they have photographic ‘flaws,’ it creates a particular style that created an entire visual culture around it – Lomography.
How to Mimic the Lomo Effect in Photoshop
As I’ve explained, Lomo photography can be unpredictable, and also includes different models of camera that create a different kind of photograph. Therefore there’s no specific set of rules.
I’ll mention some of the most common and characteristic effects of the Lomo cameras and how to achieve them using Photoshop. These are not set in stone. The fun part about real Lomo or digital Lomo effect is that you can be as creative as you want.
1. Vignette
Most of the images created with a Lomo camera, especially if made with long exposures, have a vignette.
To create a Lomo image in Photoshop, you need to duplicate the background layer by dragging the existing one to the bottom into the New Layer button, or by going to Menu-> Layer-> Duplicate Layer.
Next, go to Filter-> Lens Correction (If you don’t immediately see it in your version of Photoshop, go inside ‘Distort’ to find it). In the ‘Custom’ tab, move the slider called ‘Vignette.’ Once satisfied, apply the filter.
Duplicate this ‘Vignette’ layer. Go to Menu -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur. I’ll set it to 3 pixels, but this is entirely up to you.
Now use the ‘Eraser’ tool. Start to delete the center and slowly widen your moves towards the outside. We do this process because the edges are not super sharp in Lomo photography, due to the lenses often being made of plastic.
2. Grain
Since Lomo cameras use film, you can give the illusion of analog photography by adding a little grain to the image. To do this, select the first Vignette layer and go to Menu -> Filter -> Filter Gallery- > Artistic -> Film Grain.
Again, the quantity is for you to decide as it’s an authors choice and not an exact recipe to follow. I’ll do 4 with an intensity of 3.
3. Color Saturation
Finally, Lomo’s characteristic colors are overly saturated. To achieve this, while there are many ways in Photoshop, I like to do it channel by channel with the ‘Curves’ tool. Firstly, add an adjustment layer.
To do this, click on the button at the bottom of the Layer panel with the circle symbol, and choose ‘Curves’ from its pop-up menu. You can move around the settings in each channel separately by opening the ‘Preset’ drop-down menu as per the picture below:
You may continue adding some adjustment layers to keep modifying the effect. I added a ‘Gradient Map’ with an ‘Overlay’ blending mode. I also added a ‘Vibrance’ and ‘Saturation’ layer where I pushed the vibrancy up a bit more. Experiment until you are satisfied with your adjustments.
Remember that you can double-click any adjustment layer to open its properties and move the settings as many times as you want.
Once your adjusts are set, go to Layer -> Flatten Image which will compact all the layers you created into one. If however, you’d like to keep your layered file first, save a copy of it before you flatten. Once your image is flattened, go to Menu -> Filter -> Sharpen -> Unsharp Mask and apply it to your image.
Be careful not to exaggerate this because it will enhance the film grain from before. Just move the sliders while keeping an eye on the preview window.
That’s it! Take a look at the before and after images below.
Before
After
Try out this technique for yourself, and show us what you come up with in the comments section below.
The following post is from Australian photographer Neil Creek who is part of the recently launched Fine Art Photoblog, and is participating in Project 365 – a photo a day for a year – on his blog.
Welcome to the second lesson in Photography 101 – A Basic Course on the Camera. In this series, we cover all the basics of camera design and use. We talk about the ‘exposure triangle’: shutter speed, aperture and ISO. We talk about focus, depth of field and sharpness, as well as how lenses work, what focal lengths mean and how they put light on the sensor. We also look at the camera itself, how it works, what all the options mean and how they affect your photos.
This week’s lesson is Lenses and Focus
Bending Light
Last week we discussed how we can use a tiny hole to direct light so that it forms an image. All that a pinhole camera does is excludes all the light that doesn’t make an image. As we learned, however, the problem with that technique, is that it results in very dim images. As photographers we want bright images, and although that may seem obvious, we’ll discuss why in detail in a later lesson. Fortunately, there is a better way to do it.
Fig 1.2.1 A light shone into a glass
tank of water bends. Source. Fig 1.2.2 As light passes into a more
refractive material, it slows and bends.
As we touched on briefly in Lesson 1, light is a form of energy that can be bent. Bending light is called refraction. What happens when light is refracted is that it actually slows down. It’s a common misconception that light always travels at the same speed. In fact, the speed of the light depends on the type of material that it is travelling through. The really useful thing about refraction is that it can bend the path of light.
I don’t want to get into the mysterious “dual nature of light”, but remember that light can be seen as a series of waves. Line after line of these waves make up light, similar to waves hitting a beach.
Imagine we have a fishtank of water and a torch. For the sake of simplicity lets also imagine that we can see the beam clearly in the air and water. When you shine the torch at the surface of the water at an angle, from the side of the tank, you can see that the beam has been bent, see Fig 1.2.1. The many wavefronts of the light are aligned perpendicular with its direction of travel. When the wavefronts encounter the water, one part of the front hits it before the rest. The part that has entered the water and slows down, while the rest of the wave is still travelling at the same speed. The effect of this is to bend the beam. See Fig 1.2.2.
Okay that’s enough physics for now. Lets talk optics.
Lenses
This bending of light can be very useful! Lets say we wanted to concentrate all the light from a wide beam onto a narrow point. If we can direct each beam of light by bending it slightly – a little right for the light in the left side of the beam, a little left for the light in the right side of the beam – then we should be able to focus the light. This is exactly what a lens does.
There are two main factors that determine how much a lens bends the light. The refractive index of the material, which is how much it slows down the beam, and the angle of incidence. The angle of incidence (or incident angle) is how far from perpendicular the light beam is when it passes through the surface. The greater the angle, the more the bending. This is why wide-angle lenses, that need to bend the light a long way, have such a bulging appearence.
Fig 1.2.3 How much the light beam is bent depends on the angle at which it hits the lens (all other things being equal). Light passing through the very centre of the lens is unaffected, while those at the edge are bent the most. This is why lenses are curved.
Fig 1.2.4 Different shaped lenses focus the light at different distances. This is the focal length of that lens.
A simple experiment
Click for larger version
Fig 1.2.5 An everyday magnifying glass can create an image. In a darkened room, set up a candle, a magnifying glass and a sheet of paper as a screen. With the magnifying glass squared up with the cangle and the screen, slide the glass and screen backwards and forwards until you bring an image of the candle into focus. Just as with the pinhole camera, the image projected by the lens us upside down. Notice that the shadow of the glass is dark except for the candle, even though the magnifying glass is see-through. This is because all of the light that passed through the glass has been focused into the image.
Not all lenses are equal
It’s not always the case that focal length equals lens length, as the complex optics in modern lenses can give a “virtual” focal length while keeping the actual lens size small. As a rule of thumb, the focal length isusually pretty close to the actual length of the light path through the lens.
Focusing
So far, we’ve been imagining a perfect beam of light hitting a refractive surface. In this beam all the light is parallel. Parallel light passed through a lens will always converge on the same point. The distance from the surface of the lens to the focus point is called the focal length and is measured in milimeters. Most lenses are described by their focal length. Zoom lenses have a range of focal lengths, a feat which is accomplished by using a complex series of lenses which can be moved relative to each other. The mm number translates into a real distance, from the front of your lens to the chip of your camera. In that way you can tell that a 400mm telephoto lens will be much longer than a 24mm wide-angle, without even looking at the lens.
If an object is close to a lens, even several hundred meters away, its reflected light entering the lens isn’t perfectly parallel. The closer the object to the lens, the less parallel, and the more the lens must be moved in order to keep focused. This change is much more noticable when objects are very close to the camera, and is one of the reasons why the depth of field in macro photos is so small – a point we will return to in a future lesson.
Fig 1.2.6 The closer an object is to a lens, the more its focus point moves, and so the more the lens must be moved to compensate.
In order to keep the image of a close object sharp, the lens must be moved relative to the screen (or camera sensor). This process is called focusing. When you are focused on an object at a certain distance, then objects which are closer or more distant than that will not be in focus. The situation can be helped somewhat, by reducing the size of the lens, just like we did with the pinhole camera, to restrict the variety of angles of light entering the lens. But we again are faced with the loss of brightness as a result.
We’ve hinted at the main reasons to use a lens: to make an image brighter and to make it bigger (or smaller!). Next week we’ll take what we have learned about lenses and see how we can use that to understand the concepts of focal length and f-ratios, and how they translate into maginification and image brightness.
Homework
I was disapointed at how few of you submitted homework for last weeks lesson. In fact, nobody did! Peter Emmett deserves some extra credit however, for his DSLR body cap pinhole camera photo taken coincidentally the weekend before the first lesson. This week’s lesson is challenging for setting homework, so I’d like to encourage you to experiment and think of how you can apply what you have learned here. Here’s some suggestions:
Project an image with a magnifying glass or a lens from your camera gear and take a photo of it. If you want to get really creative about it, be inspired by this spectacular example seen recently on Strobist.
Find and photograph examples of light refracting in everyday objects. The clearer the example the better. For example the classic pencil in a glass of water, or maybe play with some large crystals from a jewelery box.
Shoot some natural lenses. Drops of water can be creatively used as little magnifying glasses to show an inverted image of the scene beyond them. This would be a good exercise for lovers of macro photography.
“Fine Art” when it comes to travel photography is not an often used term and few photographers define themselves as “fine art travel photographers”. Genre definitions in photography can be highly subjective, and the fine art line can be very fine indeed. For me as a travel shooter, the fine art approach is just a natural extension of who I am and how I see and share the world through my images.
Vietnam is one of my favorite places to photograph, not only because of its remarkable aesthetic qualities but because of my great fondness for its people. And so when asked to talk about my photography through the fine art lens, using Vietnam as the focal point was an easy choice to make.
Flower H’mong mother and daughter walking a rice terrace berm in Mu Cang Chai, northern Vietnam.
Exposure settings: f/4, 1/2000th, ISO 400, 70mm focal length.
Fishermen resting. Shot from a bridge near Lang Co Bay. Exposure settings: f/8, 1/320th, ISO 800,
56mm focal length.
The Fine Art of Travel Photography – People and Landscapes
Fine art photography, at least the way I see it, is about focusing on a specific style or look that reoccurs in every image with a goal to create aesthetically pleasing and engaging work.
Fine art travel photography implies that each travel-themed photo is of a very high artistic standard with consistent consideration to an effective composition, use of tonal range (lights and darks), and a balanced or focused color scheme throughout the photo.
Personally, I use natural light, and again, approach a photo to be a work of art. The goal is to create a visually striking image that looks similar to what a painter might have created, while still also looking completely like a photograph.
Fishing amidst the thousands of karst limestone formations of fabled Ha Long Bay. Exposure settings:
f/9, 1/200th, ISO 800, 35mm focal length.
Four fishermen raise their nets on the Perfume River in Hue, central coastal Vietnam. Exposure
settings: f/11, 1/160th, ISO 800, 30mm focal length.
Showcase the people and culture
I aim to do this while still faithfully representing a country’s culture, with the goal to accurately, if ideally, portray the personality and lives of the people within the photos. I have always been most interested in the artistic side of travel photography, and less so in the traditional or documentary approach.
That said, I can see myself taking on more singularly focused projects in the future, where I can apply my artistic sense to the challenges of documentary storytelling within the travel space.
A Khmer-Vietnamese monk daydreams at his monastery window in the Mekong Delta region.
Exposure settings: f/4, 1/125th, ISO 640, 40mm focal length.
Set your intention of making art
Although it may seem obvious, I think it’s critically important when adopting the fine art style to have the intention of making art throughout the process – from preparation to post-production. I take this mindset into the field and shoot a variety of subjects in various ways.
Portraiture is my first love, but I also enjoy landscape, wildlife, and cultural documentary photography. The purpose is to showcase scenes of life and culture for others to observe and enjoy. And of course I enjoy it as well, or I wouldn’t be doing it!
Ladies from the Cham ethnic group in Phan Rang having their own water festival. Exposure settings:
f/36, 1/15th, ISO 400, 90mm focal length.
Vietnamese lady wearing the traditional white “Ao Dai” and Non La (conical hat), Saigon. Exposure
settings: f/4, 1/125th, ISO 640, 70mm focal length.
Have a vision and shoot with a purpose
In each work, I try to have a vision and understand what the photo will be about and how it will look in my mind before I take it. There is nothing in the frame that shouldn’t be there – everything included serves a purpose.
I also like to look for patterns in the scenes and feature these in the composition. Careful composition allows for clean backgrounds, no unnecessary distractions from the subject, and a clear focal point that is immediately identifiable against a complementary background that helps to tell the story or set the mood for the piece.
Below is some insight into how I approached photographing some of my favorite Vietnam images taken over the last few years.
Forever in Love
“Forever in Love” – A loving couple in Hoi An share a moment of joy and happiness together in
their garden as the sun sets. At the time of photography, they had been married for 66 years. Exposure
settings: f/7.1, 1/200th, ISO 500, 50mm focal length.
A happy boy playing in a blue sea of fishing nets in the Mekong Delta region of southern Vietnam.
Exposure settings: f/8, 1/250th, ISO 500, 24mm focal length.
I was in search of a workshop where fishing nets are made by hand in the Mekong Delta region of Vietnam. When I arrived, I noticed a boy and his friends were curious about my presence and wanted to meet me and help out if they could. They led me to the net weaving shop, which was a large open-ended structure with a corrugated tin roof.
Inside were seated ladies spread about busily creating these nets. I was immediately struck by the blue color and knew it would be very photogenic, but it was important to get the right light to make them come to life. I noticed all the ladies were in shaded, darker areas where the light wasn’t strong enough. There was an area that was close to an opening in the rooftop, under a natural skylight. I saw that the light was good there, but without a human subject the photo wouldn’t be so interesting.
Since I had created a rapport with the boy and his friends and they were still hanging around, I encouraged them to play in the fishing nets. Demonstrating myself, I ran and jumped into the nets, making everyone laugh, and the kids started to do the same themselves. I captured this photo knowing that the frame had to be filled with the blue fishing nets to bring attention to the boy. It’s his genuine smile and action that makes this photo all the more interesting and enjoyable to view.
Patterns on the Streets of Hanoi
A busy street scene in Hanoi photographed from a bridge on a rainy morning. Exposure settings:
f/14, 1/40th, ISO 1250, 35mm focal length.
It was raining one morning that I was to be exploring the city of Hanoi, which could have been considered a problem for photography. I went to the Long Bien Bridge after visiting a nearby market and observed the traffic passing by underneath me. I saw the potential for a really interesting pattern of cyclists with the high volume of motorbike traffic and the occasional bicycle. The rain had stopped, but the wet roads were creating reflections which would ultimately be beneficial and make for more dynamic lighting in the picture.
I waited a long time and photographed many combinations and patterns of commuters. I felt it was important to have an interesting focal point that was different from the rest of the scene. That was either going to be a person walking across the road or riding a bicycle amongst the sea of cars and other traffic.
I decided to use a slightly slower shutter speed to blur the traffic and capture the human subject sharper than the surroundings. It took a lot of patience and time on the bridge to finally capture an interesting pattern. It was fun to find the art in simple, everyday life.
Old Man with a Lute
Exposure settings: f/4, 1/160th, ISO 1000, 70mm focal length.
I met this old man in the small idyllic village of Ninh Binh where he was walking by a lake. When he learned that I would like to make his portrait, he invited me into his home close by. We drank some tea and I spent some time together with his family.
Before I photograph someone, I always look around the scene and try to find the right place where I will take their picture, depending on the lighting and the background. I noticed near a window there was strong natural light coming into his otherwise dark home, and I placed a chair in this spot for him to sit. There was enough light on the man to not require a tripod in this position.
I noticed an old lute hanging on the wall. I found out that it was his and he could play, so I asked if he could show me. As he played, I took some pictures, but I noticed that the light would be stronger on his face, which is the main focal point if he were looking out the window. The breeze from the window blew his beard gently to one side, creating some movement in this portrait of an interesting, old and very friendly Vietnamese man who I was privileged to meet and photograph.
Here are a few more example images of my fine art travel photography.
Lightroom is an excellent program editing and managing your image files. When it comes to organizing and developing your photos, Lightroom can’t be beaten. However, there are times when it slows down; like when it renders previews. To address this, here are ten tips that will make Lightroom Classic CC run faster.
Update Lightroom regularly
Let’s start with the simplest tip: update Lightroom regularly.
Word is that Adobe has been working diligently behind the scenes on improving the performance of Lightroom, so it’s important to keep it updated.
To check for updates, click on -> Help in the top menu bar in Lightroom and then click on -> Updates to install them.
Optimize your Catalog
Lightroom continually updates the catalog file, but eventually, the data structure can become less optimal. Lightroom has an “optimize catalog” option you can enable to improve performance.
To access this option, go to Lightroom -> Preferences and click on -> Performance.
Then click on -> Optimize Performance.
Set up Lightroom to back up on a regular schedule, and set it to optimize the catalog following the backup.
You can backup as often as you like. Ensure you always have the latest backup in case your Lightroom catalog becomes corrupt.
Be sure to discard previous backups to keep them from slowing down your computer.
More on this in a bit.
Store your Lightroom Catalog and Previews on your main hard drive
Lightroom stores your catalog and preview files on your main hard drive by default.
To check where the catalog and previews files are stored, go to Lightroom -> Catalog Setting (Mac) or -> Edit -> Catalog Settings (PC).
The Catalog name is an .lrcat file and its location can be found under the -> General tab.
The preview file is an .lrdata file and it is stored in the same location.
Check your hard drive space
If your computer’s main hard drive is running low on space, Lightroom will slow down, as will any other programs that you’re running simultaneously, like Photoshop.
Your main hard drive needs at least 20% free space for Lightroom to run optimally.
Keep in mind that Lightroom can actually be one of the reasons you’re running low on space!
If you have Lightroom set to back up your catalog every day or every time you close it down, that can result in a lot of space being taken up by backup files.
Delete all of these backup files except the last couple of backups you have made.
It’s important to have the latest backup in case your Lightroom catalog becomes corrupt, but that is all you really need.
Convert your images to DNG when importing into Lightroom
DNG is short for Digital Negative. It’s a RAW file format created by Adobe.
When you convert a file into DNG, Lightroom ads Fast Load Data to the file, which results in a partially processed preview that allows Lightroom to render faster previews in the Develop module.
Adobe claims that a DNG file with Fast Load Data can load up to eight times faster.
Another benefit of converting to DNG files is that they are smaller files than other RAW formats and take up 20% less space on your hard drive.
You must enable this Fast Load Data under your Lightroom Preferences tab.
Go to -> File Handling and check off Embed Fast Load Data. Make sure you have DNG selected as the file extension.
Edit your images using Adobe’s recommended Adjustment Steps
The panels in the Develop module are organized according to a suggested workflow.
Adobe also recommends that adjustments in Lightroom follow a certain order to maximize performance. They are as follows:
Spot Healing
Lens Correction
Transformations
Global Adjustments
Local Adjustments
Sharpening
Noise Reduction
Whenever you make an edit, Lightroom applies it and calculates the previous adjustments that have been made. The more adjustments you apply, the more Lightroom slows down.
This helps keep track of your edits but slows down your system because Lightroom is calculating adjustments as you edit.
I personally stick to this order, except that I start by adjusting my white balance.
I also leave detailed edits for Photoshop. For example, as using the spot healing brush repeatedly can slow Lightroom down significantly. You are better off using this tool in Photoshop, which is also more precise.
Also, editing your images in the order they appear in your Lightroom filmstrip can have an impact on speed.
Lightroom caches images for faster performance in the Develop module.
It will automatically load the next and previous images in the filmstrip below your photos in the memory.
In the screenshot below, the active image is highlighted with a lighter grey background. The images on either side have also been loaded into memory for quick access.
Build standard previews on Import
Lightroom offers several preview settings for your images.
Although there are differing opinions as to which is the optimal preview setting, I suggest building standard previews on import.
This will slow down the import process, but it will make the Library module more responsive when you review the imported images. Lightroom renders the previews from your SSD, rather than building them from the RAW files.
Make sure your previews are set close to the width of your screen.
For example, I work on a 27-inch iMac with a 5120 x 2880 built-in retina display. This means my display should be set at 5120 pixels.
To make this adjustment, go to the -> Catalog Settings and choose -> File Handling.
Choose the previews size under -> Standard Preview Size.
Make your Camera RAW cache larger
Lightroom has a Preview Cache, which is stored with your Catalog file and used in the Library view.
It also has a Camera RAW cache, which loads the image date when you’re in the Develop module.
The default size for this is 1GB, which slows down performance due to Lightroom swapping images in and out of its cache while you’re editing.
I suggest setting the Camera RAW cache to 20 or 30GB.
To set this option go to your Lightroom -> Preferences and click -> Performance.
Set your desired maximum size RAW cache Settings.
Disable XMP Writing
Lightroom keeps track of the edits you make in the Develop module in its catalog. If something happens to this catalog, you can lose all your data.
Lightroom can be configured to write the develop setting data into an XMP file. This a small file that contains the edit information and is written to your computer’s hard drive in the same place as your original RAW file.
The problem is that writing changes into this file can really slow your computer down.
I suggest disabling this feature and make sure that you always have a current backup instead.
Pause Address and Face Lookup features
Lightroom allows you to look up image address based on the GPS data, or the ability to search for faces.
However, allowing these options to run in the background can slow Lightroom down. So it’s best to pause them while you’re actually editing your photos.
You can start them up again if they’re relevant to your editing process.
For example, as a food photographer, I don’t use these features so I have mine set permanently on “pause”.
To access these features, go to where your name appears in the top left-hand corner of the Lightroom interface and click on the arrow beside it to access the drop-down menu. Choose -> Pause.
When it comes to archiving, organizing and all-around management of your photos, Lightroom is an amazing program.
Hopefully, these tips help you get the most out of the program and speed up its performance so you can spend less time editing and more time shooting!
The following post is from Australian photographer 
Fig 1.2.1 A light shone into a glass
Fig 1.2.2 As light passes into a more
Not all lenses are equal
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