My Lomo-Story: Thanks TommyP
written by oldskool_rider
on December 27th, 2008
, 5 comments
(1 vote)
When I was younger I was always creative, making or drawing things but it was never enough for me! I always wanted something better, something that others didn’t know how to do!
When I was about 15 I bought a digital camera. Most of my friends didn’t have cameras so i was always “the guy who took photos all the time” (sometimes even when inappropriate)
I was hooked to photography instantly. it was an art form that I found personal. It was so vast in creativity. I created photos that were figurative, and I created photos that were non-figurative. A few years later I went to college to study art and I met a lot of new people. One of whom was the person who showed me what Lomography was, and that person is TommyP.
“you can use the coloured gel from my colorspash flash to make the light coloured if you like” were the first words i heard him say.
“What? Colorsplash flash?” I said. I’d never heard of this item before, but i wanted one!
Throughout the next year he introduced me to the LC-A, the supersampler, the coloursplash camera, the action sampler, the fisheye, the Lubitel, and many more!
His photos were like those i had never seen before. Double exposures, high in contrast and vibrant colours!
i was in awe at the number of cameras he had and i almost felt self conscious at the fact i had a bottom of the range digital fuji bridge camera and he had all of these exciting, interesting, fascinating cameras. he also told me about LSI and how some of his photos had been put in various books (via competitions on the site) and how he’d won competitions and cameras and “piggies”
i so wanted to be a part of this community he had talked about!
The college year ended and we haven’t seen each other since.
To be honest, we werent even really friends, we just both knew we both liked photography, so we talked now and then.
One year passed…
I was shopping with my Mum in town and I saw a new shop (Inspired in Ipswich, Suffolk, UK) I went in for a look. they had some pretty cool things in there, then i saw it!!
It was a shelf of cool looking plastic cameras. I was so excited, i knew i couldn’t walk out of the shop without one of these beautiful toys in my hands. i went straight for the fisheye 2 and paid the owner of the shop £50 cash, because it was an ex display.
The next day I went on holiday and took my new fishy friend with me. over the next week, i took more photos than i had ever taken on film before!
Immediately I was hooked to these cameras, and as soon as I returned from holiday i made sure i became part of the Lomographic community on lomography.com
Later that month i purchased a Red Holga and a coloursplash flash, and now my collection is huge!
for the past 5 or 6 months, I have gone almost nowhere without a camera in my hand. I can truly say that Lomography has changed my life and has given me a new freedom in terms of creativity! And as for what i said at the start about wanting to be able to make something no one else can, that doesn’t matter anymore, because people can steal and borrow techniques. they can use the same sorts of camera or film or anything, but Lomography has helped me to realize that photography has a meaning to me that might have a different meaning to someone else.
it is something personal.
These images are a few from my first few rolls
Do you have your own Lomo story to share? Submit to the blog with the ff. requirements:
- a short story (not more than 500 words) telling us how you first discovered Lomography
- about 15 (or more!) pictures for the gallery – at least 768px in width or height
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