Life in Lomo?

Just a few thoughts for those of you who use programs like Hipstamatic et al to add lomo effects to photos taken on your phone. The vintage lomo "film" look is in right now, and these photos add a bit of grunge and randomness to the sterile, predictable world of digital photography. It's also a good way to mask the shortcomings of the average phone camera, although they are getting better.

The danger of processing every photo you take like this is that, a few years from now, all of your memories are going to be green and grainy with a heavy vignette. Not exactly how you want to look back on Christmas 2010... There are a couple ways around this. Vignette, the camera app I use on Android, lets you automatically save the original photo along with the edited version. I shoot everything 2 for 1 this way, and just delete the originals that have no future value. Every so often I'll back them up to my computer. If your camera app doesn't let you save the original, some let you edit photos that you've already taken on your phone. You can shoot with the normal camera app and then re-edit the photos later before sharing them. This is a bit of a pain, but at least you'll have a "clean" copy of your photos.

I bring this up because I find myself relying on my phone more and more as my point n shoot camera. A lot of times I'll choose to leave the camera bag at home, knowing my phone can capture a decent image if I need it to. I like playing with the different processing effects, but it's nice to know I have a version I can edit normally and print or hang on to for the future.

Do you use your phone as a point n shoot? Do you process everything with a camera app and share from your phone, or do you take photos and put them on your computer?

~S

[title of blog] on flickr