Lomography: A Ghost Town

Last weekend I planned a photo outing for my lomography-loving friends.

Question: A blogger recently asked, "What is lomography?"
Answer:  Lomography is the term for an approach to photography that emphasizes casual snapshots, sponteneity, ubiquity, randomness, and close-ups, rather than being concerned with the technicalities, aesthetics, and the conventional world of photography.

Lomography.com is an awesome online community that celebrates all forms of toy cameras, high contrast, twisted colors and noticeable vignettes. 

I recently started a club in my town for my friends and lomography-loving photograph enthusiasts. We talk about our Hogla and Diana cameras, film processing, photographers, websites, and all sorts of other photo-related things.

We set out a couple of hours before sunset at a local Ghost Town....The nearby 'former' town of Picher, Oklahoma was a center for lead and zinc mining.

It was discovered that the ground was contaminated and could possibly cave-in so the town was ordered to evacuate in 2006.

In 2008, the town was struck by a tornado. Most of the town was destroyed by the tornado.

In 2009, the school system was dissolved (enrollment had gone from 340 to 40 in 3 years).

The city is considered too toxic to  be habitable.

Read much more factual, interesting, enthralling, descriptive account of the town's conditions in an article in Wired magazine Armageddon, USA: A Tour of America's Most Toxic Town here.

I will be posting my digital photos as well. I would love to hear your thoughts on this subject.

Below are my first roll of Holga pictures from the shoot.

This is the first roll of film that I have ever processed in the darkroom.

I actually processed two rolls of black and white film Sunday night, in the roll below, every picture turned out pretty cool.

I ruined the other roll because I wound it on the spool incorrectly and the processing chemicals weren't evenly distributed on the film creating white streaks--SO disappointing. But, at least the pictures were of Picher and not Paris...analog....its a learning thing....and the results are magical.

Here is a contact sheet from my first roll. I enlarged the Holga images below directly off the contact sheet in iPhoto...there was some dust on my scanner, and you can see little white dots on some of the pictures, I can't wait to enlarge the real images in the darkroom later!

Check back tomorrow for my digital images. There is a stark difference in the results. I think you will like the contrast.