Compose two styles
Rather than blending two styles into a middle, this assigns them roles: one carries the structure, the other appears as an accent. Where the two fight, it says so before you start.
How to divide the work
- Composition
- Follow Lomography: Shoot from the hip and leave the cut off edges alone
- Type
- Set in Lomography's manner (Handwritten dates and stickers over anything typeset), and let Snapshot Aesthetic's lettering (No type, or at most a scrawl on the back of a print) appear only where you want the eye to catch.
- Material
- Ground in Lomography's material (Keep the vignette and the cross processed color shift as they came); bring in exactly one thing from Snapshot Aesthetic (Direct flash with its hard shadow, color left uncorrected).
- Colour
- Build on #e9e6dd, #67635d, #171615 and admit one accent from #e9e6dd, #67635d, #171615.
Where they fight
- Both belong to Photographic Genres, so the difference is small. Push the roles further apart than feels comfortable.
- Roughly 104 years apart. Keep one of them recognisably period rather than letting both drift into the middle.
Caution
- Lomography The accidents get added afterwards as filters, so nothing is left but calculated chance in a picture where failure was never possible.
- Snapshot Aesthetic The harder amateurism is staged, the more it shows, and the absence of real time spent with the subject becomes the only thing visible.
Image prompt
An original image that takes its structure from Lomography (Style, 1992–) and its accent from Snapshot Aesthetic (Style, 1888– / 1960s art adoption). Structural cues: Heavy vignetting; Cross-process color shifts; Multiple-exposure chance; Shooting from the hip. Accent cues, used sparingly: Tilted framing; Subjects cut by the frame; Direct flash; Album intimacy. Composition: Shoot from the hip and leave the cut off edges alone. Type and lettering: Handwritten dates and stickers over anything typeset. Let one material quality come from the second style: Direct flash with its hard shadow, color left uncorrected. Mood: Play, Nostalgia, Rebellion, Intimacy. Color: build on #e9e6dd, #67635d, #171615 with a single accent drawn from #e9e6dd, #67635d, #171615. Constraints: do not imitate, reference or name any specific artist, studio, brand, character or copyrighted work. Produce an original composition in the general period languages described above.
Related entries
- 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.
- Snapshot Aesthetic 1888– / 1960s art adoption / Style / Photographic Genres
An aesthetic that takes the failures of amateur photography since Kodak, the tilted horizon, the head cut off at the edge, the flatness of the flash, and claims them on purpose. The intimacy of the family album became a grammar for art photography from Winogrand to Goldin.
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