Digital Apps with Analogue hearts...

April fools day is a great day for unrealistic and fun ideas to be kicked around, to the humourous downfall of that one person you know who always falls for them. Like many of us, I laughed at the phrankencamera (altho, how awesome would that be??) and the lomo app. However, when I clicked the link and started filling out the app form, I started to actually imagine what apps would be useful to someone like us, without becoming yet another lomo-esque photo editor.

I thought about what tools are useful to film users, things like the Massive Dev Chart App allow users to find the developing times for their chosen film, developer and dilution. Timers are always handy when you’re developing film in the back alleys with discarded coffee, and altho some prefer not to rely on them, an exposure meter couldn’t go amiss either.

However, (appart from all of these apps existing (more apps for android please)) they don’t speak to what (it seems to me) is the real heart of lomography – the community. My favourite part of looking through the galleries is pictures of people and their friends enjoying their time together, and its apps that encourage the community spirit that should truly bear the lomography stamp of approval.

Imagine the travelling to a new city and opening a lomography four-square style app and discovering that a fellow film buff is snapping pictures 2 streets away at a small coffee and comic shop. And look, they have the Lubitel 166+ you’ve always wanted to try….

Or, it’s a special occassion, it’s Sir David Brewster’s birthday (11th December 1781) and your phone vibrates in your pocket. You’r lomo rumble app has just updated. You now have 24 hours to build a pinhole camera and shoot, develop and upload a picture of you and a random stranger!

Live in a city with a lomography embassy store? Buzz Buzz. New challenge, bring a complete stranger with you and compete to win a pair of cameras for you and your newly-converted lomography friend.

New update. A lomo-comrade has just hidden a roll of exposed film in your town. If you find it, your task is to shoot a set of your own images and develop them. Maybe they used an actionsampler and you’re rocking a fisheye. Your dreamy Diana shots complementing their sprocket-bordered shots? Discuss the results in your favourite watering hole? Now shoot a new roll of your own and deposit it (with accessible leader) for someone else!

Hope you find these ideas interesting, had to dump them somewhere before they took over my imagination :)

written by notimeforfacts on 2011-04-01