One of my favorite things about social networking is that you can learn about stuff that you might never have discovered on your own. Case in point – someone I know posted a question about lomography and I got curious about what that is so I started looking into it. It turns out that it’s a form of photography that got popular in the 1990′s and actually looks like it’s really cool.

What I’ve learned about lomography so far:

• It uses a specific, unique type of camera. In this way it is kind of like Polaroid photography where the camera itself helps make it fall into the niche that it is in.
• It is astoundingly colorful. I don’t know if this is because of the camera or the film or the way that the film is processed or what but the pictures are always really colorful and I love the look that they have because of this.
• It’s all about spontaneous shooting. It’s not about figuring out specific shutter speeds or waiting to capture the ideal moment. It’s about “shooting from the hip”, photographing people who might not want you to do so and playing around with what you’re doing. I love this idea!
• Lomographers love close-ups. This is a very human art because the best pictures are pictures of people taken as close to them as you can get.

Tags: 90s fads, art, lomography, photography