Holga cameras started out as a cheap way for working-class people in China to be able to take photos of their families. Because the materials used to make these cameras is so cheap the results are over-saturated colours, blurred and dark edges, light-leaking and weird double-exposures. Strangely this look is so distinctive and often striking that it’s acquired a bit of a cult status and people with expensive digital cameras will often doctor their clean images to imitate the Lomo look (you can include me in this group…examples above).
Caitriona has a competition on her photoblog that’s running alongside the Absolut Lomo competition. They sent her an email out of the blue to say they were giving her two Holga cameras, one for her and one for the winner of any competition she wanted to run in return for some publicity for their own campaign. Now why doesn’t anything like that ever happen to me? I’d be happy to link to the Apple website if they want to send me a couple of iPods.
Caitriona explains the rules over on her blog but basically you just need to submit a photo to the Absolut Lomo Wall and then email her either the link or the photo so she can choose a winner. The photograph can be of anything at all as long as it follows the 10 rules of Lomography:
1. Take your LOMO everywhere you go & whenever you go.
2. Use it anytime — day or night.
3. Lomography is not an interference in your life, but a part of it.
4. Shoot from the hip.
5. Approach the objects of your lomographic desire as close as possible.
6. Don’t think.
7. Be fast.
8. You don’t have to know beforehand what you’ve captured on film.
9. You don’t have to know afterwards, either.
10. Don’t worry about the rules.
