Lomography - Skill or Just Point & Shoot?

[l/l/rX]

What are your guys opinion on lomography? Is there an actual skill behind it to capture pictures or basically just pick up the camera and shoot whatever you want to shoot?

I bought my brother this diana camera set from urban outfitters, having no clue what lomography was (his gf just told me he wanted it), after I bought it I did some research online and really enjoyed the pictures I saw. Also reading reviews on the camera set I just bought lots of people were saying to watch youtube videos on how to use it properly etc, then this other website www.lomography.com, basically just tells you to pick up the camera and shoot anything and everything.

This type of photography seems to be a hipster sort of thing, but I really like the style of pictures it captures.

Anyways point being to all this, since I like the pictures soo much I think I'm going to steal it from him for a bit and before I go wasting rolls of film and money can I really just point and shoot or are there tips, tricks and skills behind this?

[sputnik]

Lame hipster art.

Bad photography made with crappy cameras.

Its as much as art as my one year old painting a picture.

[msommers]

I'm not terribly sure I understand the concept. Taking photos of anything and everything isn't exactly something new but the few random photos I did see have the white balance way off and are extremely under or over exposed. Maybe that is "style"?

I guess if you're wanting to go after something like that, shoot in RAW if possible and you can play around with the settings afterwards because I think any point and shoot now will not even work like that haha.

[Pollywog]

I like Lomo art.

Some photographers can't get over the usual lack of technique involved to achieve such results, but sometimes photographers use unusual techniques to create odd results intentionally, which in my mind is no different from normal art.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2478/3740586329_60525e5227_z.jpg

[D. Dub]

Originally posted by sputnik


...my one year old painting a picture.


That is, perhaps, one of the truest definitions of art, in my eyes anyways.

[ExtraSlow]

Originally posted by Pollywog
I like Lomo art.
Like any medium, when practised by a skilled artist, it's beautiful. When practiced by fad-following hipsters who dedicate zero effort to the craft, it's garbage.

A true artist could make something wonderful with a shoebox pinhole camera, or any piece of imaging equipment.

[dragonone]

the thing is, as soon as a picture is lo-fi, has crazy vignetting, blown out highlights, and over saturated colors and contrast, all of a sudden it's artsy.

i do like it in that it helped photography spread like fire to many more people. look at all the diana's sold and the respective iphone apps.