Zemni Photography Blog

Category: To Do

  • Topaz AI plug-ins

    Topaz Lab Plug-ins work with Photoshop, Lightroom and as Stand-Alone Aps.

    Topaz AI Plug-ins

    The Artificial Intelligence plug-ins are professional plug-ins using sophisticated AI algorithms for sharpening (focus, stabilisation and smart sharpening), noise reduction, image enlargement and jpg/RAW conversion to produce better results in much faster and RSI-friendly way than other software currently available. They are invaluable in their ability to improve images where the technical quality is not optimal because they were taken on older equipment and/or in less than ideal conditions.

    Topaz Studio

    Topaz Studio is the one-stop-shop option that accesses not only the AI plug-ins, but also different customisable filters and looks. They work on a layer and mask model like Photoshop. On preliminary exploration I do not find them as interesting or easy to use as the Dx0FX control point system. For computer art I would use Corel Painter.

  • Photoshop: jpg artefact and noise reduction

    A very basic explanation of removal of jpg artifacts in the Noise Reduction filter, discussing the potential tensions between different aims. Improves, but does not produce a high quality image.
    An interesting approach using Lab Colour mode to separate out the lightness, colour and contrast channels of the image. Artifacts are most evident in the colour and contrast A and B channels. Add Gaussian blur to A and B channels. Higher values give a sort of watercolour effect. Sharpen the lightness channel. Go back to RGB at the end to use filters etc again.
    Duplicate the image. On top layer use surface blur – avoids blurring the edges. Change to colour blend mode to get rid of colour noise. Mask areas if necessary. Duplicate again and use dust and scratches filter gets rid of luminance noise. Again use masks to [reserve details. Duplicate again and Reduce Noise filter and use preserve details slider.
    Uses Dfine and Lumensia combined in Photoshop.
    Uses multiple images as layers and image average.

  • Lightroom Workflow

    Snapshots, Virtual Copies and Stacking enables effective exploration of different versions.

  • Lightroom Black and White

    Black and White landscapes

    Using built in profiles for quick different looks.

  • Create a Slideshow

    Task

    Look at some of the audio-visual slideshows on the websites listed above. Make some notes about particular works of interest, considering how they are edited, sequenced and how audio is used with images. Note down your own personal observations. (See Post Time-based audio-visual presentations)

    Whether or not you intend to present your photographs for Assignment Five as an audiovisual piece, suppose for this exercise that you will. Familiarise yourself with any basic slideshow – or video-making software and compile an edit of your work, experimenting with transitions, text and music and/or sound effects. Save your work so that your tutor and/or an assessor can view this if necessary. Write a brief evaluation of your work, commenting on how appropriate and effective you think this medium is for presenting your photographs.

    I was not able to complete this exercise because of RSI.

    I have used automated slideshows on both this blog and the zemniimages website as a way of showing many photos in sequence on journeys. See:

    I also did this type of automated slideshow for the Kyrgyzstan images:

    http://www.zemniimages.com/Photography/Documentary/Kyrgyzstan

    These all need more work on sequencing to control the impacts as automated slideshows. This is not so straightforward on SmugMug and requires a lot of clicking to deselect and reselect many images – and hence gives RSI. I need to do one page for each set of images, and am planning this for the summer when I have less professional computer work to do.

    I do a lot of simple video work in Lightroom and Adobe Premiere for work. The only one containing landscape photos is: 

    Maendeleo Yetu on You Tube (done quite quickly and still needs more editing)

    I am planning at some point to develop the colour images of Baizakh village as audio-visual presentations in Adobe Premiere. I would like to do something more complex with the Storm over T’ian Shen images in Adobe After Effects. But I get RSI if I do too much video work. So this will have to wait until I have a lot less other work. I also need to find suitable music – or compose my own in Adobe audition. I will be updating my skills in both Audition and Premiere this year for work. I will be developing skills in After Effects for my Illustration level 2 course.

     

  • Exhibitions and the White Cube

    Reflections on: Thomas McEvilley’s summary of O’Doherty’s 1976 series of articles for ArtForum in his introduction to O’Doherty, B (1999) Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space University of California Press

    Traditionally the photograph has been considered in terms of a print, and the high point of recognition for a photographer being an exhibition of their prints in a Fine Art Gallery. Galleries may present very different types of space in terms of lighting conditions, amounts and shape of space and general ‘feel’. But a tendency has been to galleries presenting white ‘neutral’ space. However the apparent ‘neutrality’ of this space needs to be questioned in terms of the implicit meanings this imposes on the image and the presumed ’empty mind’ of the viewer.

    I would argue that a more interesting approach would be to acknowledge the importance of both context and the viewer’s life experience in giving meaning to the image, as valuable and integral parts of the art itself. This could mean displaying the same image in different conditions and explicitly promoting discussion of the ways that different life perspectives and everyday experiences of different viewers affect the meanings attributed. This could in turn lead photographers to discover ever more interesting perspectives and innovative approaches to their own work.

    For the moment I do not have the equipment or skills to produce for gallery exhibition.

    Summary of the article

    The main argument underlying the three articles is that the modernist gallery practice of placing artworks in a ‘White Cube’ places them in a sterile environment, depriving them of both connection to outside life and subjective meaning to the viewer, perpetuating the power of an art establishment elite.

    The first of O’Doherty’s articles equates the physical space of the White Cube – windows sealed off and white walls with ceiling lights –  to religious spaces and tombs designed to maintain particular social orders and power structures. ‘Art exists in a kind of eternity of display, and though there is lots of ‘period’ (late modern) there is no time. This eternity gives the gallery a limbolike status; one has to have died already to be there.’

    ‘The eternity suggested in our exhibition spaces is ostensibly that of artistic posterity, of underlying beauty, of the masterpiece. But in fact it is a specific sensibility, with specific limitations and conditions that is so glorified. By suggesting eternal ratification of a certain sensibility, the white cube suggests the eternal ratification of the claims of the caste or group sharing that sensibility. As a ritual place of meeting for members of that caste or group, it censors out the world of social variation, promoting a sense of the sole reality of its own point of view and, consequently, its endurance or eternal rightness. Seen thus, the endurance of a certain power structure is the end for which the sympathetic magic of the white cube is devised.’

    The second part of the article looks at what this institutionalisation for the spectator ‘In return for the glimpse of ersatz eternity that the white cube affords us – and as a token of our solidarity with the special interests of a group – we give up our humanness and become the cardboard Spectator with the disembodied Eye…tireless and above the vicissitudes of chance and change’ and its underpinnings in modernist aesthetics of formalism and abstraction in the search for ‘transcendence’.

    The final part of the article looks at the anti-formalist tradition that questioned and mocked the emptiness and meaninglessness of this white space.

    My reflections

    Both the original 1976 article and the 1999 book are now quite old, and have – as the end of the article suggests and also the anti-formalist tradition and critique of modernism – now become part of the ‘Canon’.

    In relation to photography, the exclusive dominance of the ‘White Cube’ as an aesthetic guardian never really existed – despite the authority of organisations like the Royal Photographic Society. Photography by its nature is copiable, and the wide availability of cheaper cameras has always made it less exclusive. Local camera clubs and their exhibitions have been popular for a very long time – few being able to replicate the ‘ideal gallery conditions’. Technological advances with digital software and the Internet and possibilities for mass self-publishing have significantly increased the production and dissemination options.

    There is nevertheless a continuing question of ‘quality’ and relationship of photography to the Fine Art world. There has been an expansion of private and public gallery spaces in large cities like London (eg but not only Photographer’s Gallery) where photography is displayed as ‘White Cube Fine Art’. Work of photographers is now commonly curated as Fine Art exhibitions in galleries like the Tate (See http://www.tate.org.uk/search?q=Photography), National Gallery (https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/search?q=photographers),  and National Portrait Gallery. This inevitably raises issues of the power of the curator and the degree to which they promote or challenge established aesthetic ideas.

    In order to justify its display in a gallery such photography has to be ‘special’ – for example very large format images that can only be displayed in a gallery, abstraction or innovative use of traditional or digital techniques or drama in depiction of war and conflict. The gallery space and time is also inevitably a specific time that people set aside to visit a specific space – many after a long and expensive special journey. This means that certain norms of respect for the space and time of other visitors needs to be respected. Normally also the ’empty mind’ to absorb the ‘meaning of the works’ is seen as the ideal – together with reading of books etc on the photographer and work. This is true even of OCA Study visits.

    One way possible with photography would be to present prints of the same photograph in very different conditions and spaces as part of the same exhibition, or linked displays. Making the question of context an integral part.

    Another way to go beyond the ’empty mind’ approach (even in a White Cube gallery) would be not to replicate in photography the now somewhat cliche anti-formalist exhibitions, but to explicitly encourage the viewers to bring in and exchange ideas from their respective ‘outside worlds’. What does the same photograph, displayed in the same conditions mean to people with very different life experiences? That differential audience response – and even its day by day variation – is an integral part of the meaning. This would however need to go beyond the superficial recording of reactions in visitor’s books etc.

    Embracing rather than avoiding this diversity of contextual and audience meaning could lead to exciting new directions for photographers themselves. With the many digital processing options, different contextual effects could be mixed and explored to replicate or challenge them. The very different viewer responses could lead to further processing experiments and/or new images. This also opens up the possibility of more imaginative galleries themselves.

    We have also not yet seen the full effects of a move towards ‘virtual galleries’ that can (with virtual reality goggles) replicate the gallery experience – either a White Cube in one’s own home. Or infinite variations and user-generated interpretations.

     

  • Print on Demand

     

     

     

    Photobooks

     

     

    Whether or not you intend to produce a book to present your photographs for Assignment
    Five, suppose for this exercise that you will. During this exercise you’ll familiarise yourself
    with a print-on-demand application and experiment with a book design.You don’t need to place an order for the book for this exercise.

    If you don’t already have one, set up an account with a print-on-demand service, such as
    Blurb. (You don’t have to use Blurb, but whichever company you use must offer the option
    of saving your book layout draft as a pdf document.) You’ll need to download Blurb’s Booksmart software from their site. This application is fairly intuitive.

    Import the photos you’ve made so far for Assignment Five into the new project.
    Experiment with layout, text, titles and captions; when you’re satisfied with a draft, save it
    as a pdf. If you’re using Blurb the pdf will be watermarked with their logo but this doesn’t
    matter. If you’re keeping your learning log online, link this document into a blog post. If
    you’re keeping a hard copy log, print the pdf on regular printer paper.

    Make some brief notes about how you found working with the software and briefly evaluate
    your rough book design, describing any particular design choices and noting any influences
    in terms of other books that inspired you.

    If you’re thinking about producing a book for your self-directed project, you may want to
    email the pdf or send a link to it to your tutor for their comments.

  • On-line Exhibitions

    Task
    An online audio-visual piece doesn’t necessarily have to be the piece of art in itself, but may simply be part of the ‘presence’ of the work, put together to promote it, possibly to coincide with an exhibition or publication, or to help generate interest more speculatively. 

    A post by Sharon Boothroyd on WeAreOCA discusses a piece of work that is particularly relevant both to our discussions on contemporary landscape photography and the slideshow format. The sequence in question was designed to be the exhibition. Read the post and if you have any comments of your own, add them and include a link in your learning log.

    Looking at the Land: 21st Century American Views.

    This is a photo slideshow without sound curated for Flakphoto by Andy Adams. See discussion in Post by Sharon Boothroyd on WeAreOCA and student comments.

    This slideshow actually left me completely cold. Maybe I missed something here. I was unsure why any of these images had been chosen compared to the on-line collections of images of American photographers I looked at in Part 2 of this course: Landscape as a Journey, Nor could I understand why they were sequenced the way they were. The display as photos confirmed this sense.

    I found many other on-line slideshows that I consider more effective in their impact, see my post:

    Time-based audio-visual presentations

     

  • ‘Late’ Photography

    TASK

    1. Read David Campany’s essay ‘Safety in Numbness’ (see ‘Online learning materials and student-led research’ at the start of this course guide). Summarise the key points of the essay and note down your own observations on the points he raises.

    ‘”There is a sense in which the late photograph, in all its silence, can easily flatter the ideological paralysis of those who gaze at it without the social or political will to make sense of its circumstance…If the banal matter-of-factness of the late photograph can fill us with a sense of the sublime, it is imperative that we think through why this might be. There is a fine line between the banal and the sublime, and it is a political line.” Campany p 192.

    Campany reaches this conclusion first through a discussion of Meyerowitz’s photographs Aftermath and the BBC documentary in ‘Reflections on Ground Zero’.

    [wpdevart_youtube]A8hN-aNWWBE[/wpdevart_youtube]

    He questions the trend towards ‘photographing the aftermath of events – traces, fragments, empty buildings, empty streets, damage to the body and damage to the world’ and the way it has come to be prevalent in photojournalism as a response to the overwhelming use of video now as a record of unfolding events. Partly due also to the fact that photographers are now rarely allowed access to conflict sites – unlike for example in VietNam. One could add also since Campany’s 2003 article the ubiquitous use of mobile video phones by people involved in events now able to upload them almost instantaneously as a more ‘democratic’ and immediate (if often shakily filmed) perspective and record on what is happening.

    He argues that it is the stillness of late photography that gives it its power – more memorable than events on the move. While its privileged status may be imagined to stem from a natural capacity to condense and simplify things, the effects of the still image derive much more from its capacity to remain open. It is that openness that can be paralysing ‘In its apparent finitude and muteness it can leave us in permanent limbo, suspending even the need for analysis and bolstering a kind of liberal melancholy that shuns political explanation.’

    2. Look at some of Meyerowitz’s images available online from Aftermath: World Trade Centre Archive (2006). Consider how these images differ from your own memories of the news footage and other images of the time. Write a short response to the work (around 300 words), noting what value you feel this ‘late’ approach has.

    Meyerowitz’s images were taken as the officially sanctioned record of the impact of the attack, partly as a memorial for the relatives but also a historical record. Their monumental ‘sublime beauty’ in the colours and the large cinematic format are apocalyptic – resonant of the paintings of artists like John Martin and Turner. Like much other ‘late photography’ there are few people. Those that are there are dwarfed by the enormity of the buildings, machinery and the hell volcanic fires. Meyerowitz claims that he did not make the images ‘I was told how to photograph it by the thing itself‘. As Campany points out, that means that he is not questioning his own background and assumptions that inevitably underlie his photographic skills and practice.

    His approach is very different from that of another on-site photographer – a policeman John Bott. His images have more people in, and are more participatory social documentary of the clear-up activities.

    John Botte’s photos of Ground Zero

    Unlike Meyerowitz he did not get official permission – as he had done a lot of photography as part of his police work he had been asked to photograph the clear-up work by his boss. This was now leading to various legal complications. His health was seriously damaged by the photography work and he did not profit from the photos he took – proceeds being given to charity.

    [wpdevart_youtube]vp5Zi16IRDg[/wpdevart_youtube]

    I agree with Campany that the monumental aesthetic beauty in Meyerowitz’s images seems to anaesthetise and paralyse any political questioning of why the event occurred, and whether and why that particular type of historical record was needed. I was in India conducting an NGO workshop at the time of the attacks and first saw the news with colleagues. On the one hand they had all been through much more serious natural disasters – Gujarat Earthquake and periodically severe monsoon floods – where many more thousands of people had been killed both by the disaster itself, and then lack of emergency aid in the follow-up. Much of that unreported in the Western press. On the other hand, in the light of the ongoing war in Afghanistan, there was also high anti-American feeling. It was only when I got back two weeks later that I saw images at home.

    I think that the apocalyptic nature seem to almost glorify the unintended martyrdom of the victims – matched by praise of the way in which the survivors lay their mourning images then get up and move on. They raise no questioning of events in the countries from which Al Quaeda perpetrators come, including but not only American actions, and how the conflict can really be resolved. To me they look very much like images I saw on the TV in Sudan some years later with the US ‘shock and awe’ opening of the Iraq War. But very different from the interviews with people on Al Jazeera Arabic channel of the impact. That time in video footage, some of it live.

    This lack of questioning is not however inherent in ‘late photography’, but in the selection of the effects one photographs and their contextualisation in other images or documents that might portray a multiplicity of complex perspectives – even where a clear message in unlikely to be appropriate of effective.

     
    ————————————-

    !!To be updated from Landscape Photography

    In his 2003 essay, David Campany comments that:

    “One might easily surmise that photography has of late inherited a major role as undertaker, summariser or accountant. It turns up late, wanders through the places where things have happened totting up the effects of the world’s activity.” (‘Safety in Numbness: Some remarks on the problem of “Late Photography”’ (in Campany (ed.), 2007)
    This ‘aftermath’ approach dates back to the war photographers of the American Civil War and the Crimean War (1853–56), because of technological limitations of the time. Because of the large plate cameras and slow emulsions, it was not possible to photograph actual combat. Their images focused instead on portraits of soldiers, camp scenes and the aftermath of battles and skirmishes. Their images could not yet be reproduced en masse in the illustrated press, but some of these photographs were used as the basis for woodcut engravings for publications such as The Illustrated London News and Harper’s Weekly.

    Although technology today makes it possible – though still difficult –  to capture the heat of war and atrocities, this is not necessarily the most effective way of portraying the horrors of violence.
    Examples of photographers using the ‘late’ approach in contemporary landscape include:

    • Joel Meyerowitz’s Aftermath images of Ground Zero in New York
    • Richard Misrach ‘s images of the American Desert show the aftermath of human activity but in a beautified distilled large format.
    • Sophie Ristelhueber ‘s aerial images of the Afghan conflict show the scars left on the landscape
    • Paul Seawright Hidden cold ‘objective’ images of battle sites and minefields in Afghanistan
    • Willie Doherty made very evocative images of the left detritus from conflicts during the Troubles and in the present day.

    Other photographers have focused on the precursors – the tension in anticipation of violence.  “not the ‘theatre of war’ but its rehearsal studio” (Campany, 2008, p.46). :

    • An-My Lê’s (to do) series 29 Palms (2004) documents US marine training manoeuvres at a range used to prepare soldiers ahead of deployment in Afghanistan and Iraq.
    • Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin in Chicago (2005) (to do) examine an Israeli military training ground
    • Paul Shambroom’s project Security (2003−07) studied the simulated training sites that are used by the US emergency services and Department of Homeland Security, nicknamed ‘Disaster City’ and ‘Terror Town’.
    • Sarah Pickering in UK has photographed training grounds for the fire and police service. Her images contain no people, aiming to seem like a film set ready for the action.

    See Post on Landscape Photography blog: 3.3: ‘Late Photography’

  • Colour Photography: Styles and Creativity

    Reality/surreality/hyperreality. Mechanical vs art. Looking back from digital colour and high levels of control. Capturing images is now so easy. And possibilities of control at shooting and processing stages so broad. Often lose the aesthetics and meaning.

    See also:

    Abstract Photography

    Photoshop artistic effects

    Early Colour BBC 1974 overview of early colour photographers and techniques: tinting, gum bichromate, oil process, 3-colour process and autochrome.
    George Eastman Museum 2014. Pigment processes: carbon prints and gum bichromate prints were developed in the 1850s and offer superior permanence and control of the appearance of the final print and are still used today.
    George Eastman Museum 2014. History of development of colour processes from tinting to chromogenic film processes of 1970s.

    Early photography: pictorialism to modernism

    Early colour photography processes produce a feeling of nostalgia for a by-gone leisurely time. As in monochrome photography this ‘elite impressionist aesthetic’ can be enhanced through for example use of chiaroscuro and light, smearing vaseline on the lens, adding brushstrokes or scratches to the film in development process. In colour photography particularly the aesthetic is also partly because of inherent technical limitations of early equipment and processes:

    • Lens aberrations and distortions in perspective
    • Chemicals were unstable, inconsistent and less sensitive leading to colour shifts, grain, limited tonality and dynamic range and requiring long exposure times and hence shallow depth of field and blurring. Effect of long exposures while model tries to be still so get selective movement blur? Giving the reflective feel?
    • Fragile plates and scratches that add to the feeling of human frailty and inevitable passage of time.
    • Edges of the plates? burning and fade?

    Processes like hand-colouring and tinting, coupled with the blurriness of the original black and white image give a de-saturated dreamy look. The leisurely feel is enhanced by the very long exposures needed to produce multiple plates in different colours that are then combined. Photographing any action was not possible, and requires shallow depth of field with much of the image dreamily blurred. Grain, scratches and other imperfections are further exaggerated with fragility of glass plates and the nature of pigments and chemicals used.

    Colour photography techniques
    • hand colouring of black and white prints
    • monochrome tinting through use of dyes and pigments at the development stage: cyanotypes, carbon prints and gum bichromate prints. They use pigments and bichromated colloids (viscous substances like gelatin or albumen made light-sensitive by adding a bichromate) that harden when exposed to light and become insoluble in water. The resulting prints are characterized by broad tones and soft detail, sometimes resembling paintings or drawings.
    • oil process
    • 3-colour process
    • Autochrome 1907-1935: 3 colour process using potato starch. Soft focus, pointillist grain. Slow process if you want to keep exposures under control.
    Colour photographs from 1907: Autochrome and Pictorialism. Ted Forbes 2015 as part as part of his You Tube Art of Photography series. Discusses autochrome process in the context of other early processes, debates on colour photography as art and how we interpret early colour photographs from our current digital perspective. Book Impressionist Photography.
    2018 John Thornton and Don Camera: Is pictorialism dead? Looks at the artistic inspira
    Debbi Richard 2009 Two short clips from a PBS documentary titled: “American Photography: A Century of Images.” Paul Strand’s straight photography started to re-establish the primacy of black and white as ‘serious’ photography with an emphasis on minimum artifice and attention to tonal abstraction and shapes.
    Alfred Steiglitz
    Alfred Stieglitz overview of his monochrome work and life, showing his pictorialist art style.
    Heinrich Kuhn pictorialism
    Overview of Kuhn’s life and work. Ted Forbes 2014 as part of You Tube The Art of Photography series. Interesting discussion of early colour techniques in the context of camera clubs and their debates about colour photography. Detailed discussion of technical challenges of lenses and unstable chemicals and how Kuhn addressed these through scientific experiment and composition to make very evocative images.
    Based on book Heinrich Kuhn: The Perfect Photograph
    Edward Steichen
    Overview of Steichen’s colour and black and white work, including early landscapes. Ted Forbes 2011 as part of You Tube The Art of Photography series. Based on book ‘Steichen’s Legacy’. use of moody low key landscapes. In figure studies takes out facial information to create intensity, drama and mystery. And use of abstraction with harsh lighting to produce patterns. Reduction of the image to just the information needed. Humour in shadows.
    Heinrich Kuhn autochrome technique
    Neue Galerie New York 2012. Gives a very detailed overview of the autochrome process. Priority of lighting and backlighting to give luminosity coupled with the fragility of the plates. He experimented with colour patches, aiming at being able to apply colour patches like a painter.
    Kuhn, Steiglitz and Steichen
    Neue Galerie New York 2012. Dr Monika Faber discusses exhibition and book: “Heinrich Kuehn and His American Circle: Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen”. Shows more of his tinted photographs and landscape.
    Paul Strand modernism

     The Art of Photography 2014 modernist photography using the power of the image to create social awareness. Book: Paul Strand: Sixty Years of Photographs (Aperture) http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0912…

    Colour film photography: 1970s to contemporary

    Overview focusing on era 1970s onwards by Ted Forbes 2013 as part of his You Tube Art of Photography series.
    Discusses use of autochrome process in travel photographs by National Geographic.
    William Eggleston in 1970s was the person who brought colour photography as respectable fine art.
    Saul Leider work was rediscovered in 1990s uses abstraction and faded quality.
    Fernando Schiana not high contrast
    Auri Gerscht uses splashes of colour in desaturated background.
    Dan Winters contemporary muted portraits.
    Colours are still not accurate, but that gives a retro- nostalgic feel. Use of colour as part of the composition at time of shooting. White balance is not accurate.
    William Eggleston
    Saul Leiter
    Joel Meyerowitz

    see also: Stephen Shore

    https://illustration.zemniimages.info/inspiration-stephen-shore
    Luigi Ghirri

    https://youtu.be/-us8hlAxJNE

    Martin Parr

    https://illustration.zemniimages.info/inspiration-martin-parr

    Digital Styles

    Lomography

    Lomography is a genre of photography, involving taking spontaneous photographs with minimal attention to technical details. Lomographic images often exploit unpredictable non-standard optical traits of cheap toy camera (such as light leaks and irregular lens alignment), and non-standard film processing techniques, for aesthetic effect.

    Lomography is named after the Soviet-era 35 mm LOMO LC-A Compact Automat camera cameras produced by the state-run optics manufacturer Leningradskoye Optiko-Mekhanicheskoye Obyedinenie (LOMO) PLC of Saint Petersburg. This camera was loosely based upon the Cosina CX-1 and introduced in the early 1980s. In 1992 the Lomographic Society International was founded as an art movement by a group of Viennese students interested in the LC-A camera and who put on exhibitions of photos. The art movement then developed into the Austrian company Lomographische AG, a commercial enterprise who claimed “Lomography” as a commercial trademark.

    See their website: https://www.lomography.com

    But lomography is now a genericized trademark referring to the general style that can be produced with any cheap plastic toy camera using film. Similar-looking techniques can be achieved with digital photography. Many camera phone photo editor apps include a “lomo” filter. It is also possible to achieve the effect on any digital photograph through processing in software like Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom or Analog FX Pro. The lomography trend peaked in 2011.

    Because of its ease of use, it has been used in participatory photographic activism because it is easy to use eg by children in slums of Nairobi.

    Grunge effects

    Starts with a lot of work in Lightroom before adding blur and other effects in Photoshop.
    Again produces different line and filter overlays.
    Uses blur, high pass and HDR filter effects on a very diffuse original image.
    Creates a very impactful black and white version to use instead of highpass filter overlay. And produces multiple versions.

    Cinematic effects

    Excellent overview. Introduces different cinema looks. Covers curve adjustment layers on channels, pros and cons of LUTs and how to use the phototoning gradient maps.
    Uses solid colour adjustment layers in different opactities for hoghlights, ahadows and midtones using blend if. Goves more control than opacity maps.
    Uses LUTs and blend if
    Uses moody vignettes.