Show Me Your LOMO

There's been a major surge in the popularity of old Instamatic-type cameras originally designed by Kodak and made popular in the 60s and 70s. A lot of people from my generation seem to be rather nostalgic right now, me included, and we just can't get enough vignetting or solar haze. Happily, there are a plethora of apps, like Hipstamatic and Instagram for the iPhone that allow you to simulate the qualities produced by many of these retro cameras. If you want to take it one step further, you can buy reproductions of some of these cameras (here and here are two good places to start.), like the LOMO LC-A, a camera so popular it inspired the creation of an entire society!

Produced by LOMO PLC in St. Petersburg, Russia starting in 1984, the LC-A produced strongly vignetted images in vivid colors reminiscent of the way Technicolor made everything pop in the movies. Supposedly, back in the 90s, a bunch of people got really excited about the fixed-lens camera, and it has enjoyed a cult following that still carries on today. People just couldn't resist all that vignetting and super-saturated color!

Of course, if you don't have an iPhone or you're not nostalgic enough to drop 225 beans (or more) for a repro, fear not, you can create similar LOMO effects with some photo-editing software, like Photoshop. I stumbled upon this tutorial a few weeks ago and thought it was pretty helpful, so instead of recreating the wheel, I'm just gonna give you the link.

Here's what I ended up with:

If any of you try this tutorial with one of your photos, I'd love to see it. leave a link to it in the comments. Happy LOMO-ing!