Winter Lomography
I posted a series of Winter Lomography photos over on Blogspot around the new year. For a while I was thinking of moving the blog portion of my website over there. After a lot of reading about the differences between WordPress and Blogspot, I’ve opted to maintain this as both my website and as my “blog”. I don’t post too much to the blog portion but perhaps in the future I will.
At any rate, since I’m keeping things here for the time being, I’m going to repost that post here, and link to a new set of the images. I think there were too many in the first post, and I’ve narrowed it down to the 20 images I really like, and I’ll put them in the collections portion of the site.
In the fall of 2004, after years of playing in my traditional wet darkroom, I bought a
Canon EOS 20D. It was state-of-the-art then, and expensive. Since then I’ve been through countless digital cameras. I’ve had ones I loved like the
Ricoh GRDIV and ones I hated like the
Canon EOS 40D. I’ve always kept the EOS 20D though, seemingly unable to part with it. Last Christmas I got a
Diana 20mm fisheye lens in a Canon mount and it’s been on the EOS 20D ever since. With several other DSLR’s, innumerable point and shoot cameras and dozens of film cameras gathering dust around the house, the 20D with the plastic lens doesn’t get much use.
Even though it’s not the first camera I reach for when going out, it’s fun to occasionally use. I’m not sure I buy into the whole “
Lomography” spirit of “happy accidents” and wacky snapshots, but I do think it’s a fun way to look at the world once in a while. I do think the
10 Golden Rules of Lomography are worth a read – even if blurry images aren’t your thing. Take your camera everywhere (Rule #1) and get close (Rule #5) are among the most basic of photography rules.
I remember once reading an article by Brooks Jensen,
photographer and publisher of
Lenswork Magazine, where he emphasized that a photo project need not be enormous in scope. I’ve often thought about that over the years, and have even begun a few projects very small in scope. Sometimes even small projects are difficult to finish.
The photos here represent a simple outing. It was freezing cold, and photo stops were brief. My family and I drove east along Highway 128, north of Moab, Utah. We listened to Creedence Clearwater Revival and ate beef jerky. It was simple and fun – the way photography should be. Since it was overcast and cold, I chose a single camera and decided to just shoot and not worry so much about the final result. Moab hasn’t had this much snow in a few years, and the juxtaposition of the rock and ice is interesting.
The photos are all shot with an 8 year old digital camera and a plastic lens. In keeping with the idea of Lomography – where simple reigns supreme – post production consisted of slightly boosting contrast in Adobe Camera Raw and running a minimal sharpening script in Photoshop before export. I’m not sure I’m in love with the results, but I had fun making, editing and posting them. Full gallery here: Winter Lomography.
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Don’t forget to check out some of the fine art prints for sale in my Etsy shop. I’ve also written and illustrated a children’s book for the Kindle called Coyote Life. If you’ve got kids, check it out. If you enjoy it, please leave a review. Thanks.
