Compose styles
Rather than blending styles toward a middle, this gives them roles. The first one carries the structure, the next comes in as the accent, and anything after that shows up in a single detail. Where they fight each other, it says so before you start.
How to divide the work
- Composition
- Follow Instant Photography: Compose for the square and keep it to one or two people
- Type
- Set in Instant Photography's manner (Handwrite date and name in the white margin below), and let Lomography's lettering (Handwritten dates and stickers over anything typeset) appear only where you want the eye to catch.
- Material
- Ground in Instant Photography's material (Build the development wait into the event and leave color drift alone); bring in exactly one thing from Lomography (Keep the vignette and the cross processed color shift as they came).
- Colour
- Build on #e7eeee, #957c9b, #181b25 and admit one accent from #f6f0e0, #5da063, #122106.
Where they fight
These are already listed as related entries, so the join should come easily.
Caution
- Instant Photography The style collapses into a white frame added in software, and the core of it, handing someone the only copy that exists, is lost.
- Lomography The accidents get added afterwards as filters, so nothing is left but calculated chance in a picture where failure was never possible.
Image prompt
Produce four original images that take their structure from Instant Photography (technique, 1948–) and their accent from Lomography (style, 1992–). ## What to make Make the kind of thing Instant Photography exists for: keepsakes handed over on the spot at a shop counter or an event, or production records kept as evidence that cannot be retouched. Choose one subject and hold it across all four. ## Structure comes from Instant Photography - The white-bordered square - Tender drifting color - The wait for development - One-of-a-kind materiality Composition: Compose for the square and keep it to one or two people. Type and lettering: Handwrite date and name in the white margin below. ## Accent comes from Lomography, used sparingly - Heavy vignetting - Cross-process color shifts - Multiple-exposure chance - Shooting from the hip Let one material quality come from it: Keep the vignette and the cross processed color shift as they came. ## Colour and feeling Build the ground on #e7eeee, carry the structure in #957c9b and #181b25, and let a single accent come from #5da063. These are read off real works, so a direction rather than a fixed palette. Feeling to carry: intimacy, play, nostalgia, rebellion. ## What goes wrong - Instant Photography: The style collapses into a white frame added in software, and the core of it, handing someone the only copy that exists, is lost. - Lomography: The accidents get added afterwards as filters, so nothing is left but calculated chance in a picture where failure was never possible. ## Across the four Keep the roles fixed in all four. Vary the framing, the scale and the arrangement so the set shows what this pairing can do rather than four versions of one picture. ## Constraints - Do not imitate, reference or name any specific artist, studio, brand, character or copyrighted work. - Do not reproduce the composition of an existing work. - Produce original compositions in the general period languages described above.
Related entries
- Instant Photography 1948– / Technique / Photographic Techniques
Polaroid made the picture appear on the spot. The white-bordered square, the soft color of chemical development and the fact that only one copy exists became a language of intimacy that outlived digital and carries on in Instax.
- Lomography 1992– / Style / Photographic Genres
A movement that wrote the accidents of the Soviet LC-A toy camera into a charter. Vignetting, color casts and cross-processed saturation were all affirmed under ten rules and the instruction not to think but to shoot, which made it the forerunner of post-digital love for analog.
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