Lomography has taken a spot in the photography world; a niche yet cool technique derived from shooting pictures with low resolution, analogue cameras. The effects are more artistic and peculiar, rather than focused and professional. It’s all about feeling rather than perfection. So with that intent on creating art through low-fi tools, a parallel world exists in smartphones where typically its cameras aren’t up to snuff when competing with point-and-shoot or DSLRs. An obvious marriage of convenience, developers have created a plethora of apps to instantly add effects to mimic lo-mo results with less than stellar cameras.
One of these apps is Lo-mob, developed by Aestesis. Lo-mob for Windows Phone is a great addition to anyone seeking filters and frames that mimic those lomography cameras. With over 30 plus filters to tinker with, you’ll instantly create interesting compositions of everyday life, right on your phone. It also helps that it’s a very well made app. The ease of use is something to be commended. Any picture taken or used from the phone’s library, is previewed in the list of filters. It’s a convenient way to quickly look at results without having to go through the filters one-by-one. It saves time, and it makes the process that much easier.
But all that fancy efficiency wouldn’t be worth it if the results weren’t pretty to look at. Thankfully, Lo-mob delivers here as well. The effects and outcomes are pretty darn nice, as you can see above. Not every filter is a keeper as there are some that I have not found to my liking, but the contrary is also true, as you’ll quickly build a list of preferred filters.
If sharing your creations to the world is your thing, the app also allows you to post onto Twitter. It will even add the #lomob and #wp7 hashtags for you, as well as allow you to place your own comment to the tweet. There are plenty of people out there sharing their own pictures on Twitter, and you’ll quickly realize that it’s gaining its own mini movement. Once you have taken your pictures for a social spin, you can also save your work, giving you the option to save as a small or large format file.
Now there are a few small shortcomings with this version of Lo-mob, as there are multiple features that are missing from this app. For one, you can’t re-frame a picture in the filter. Sometimes you have to be more exact when taking the picture so that you wont have cut-off heads or subject matter. It’s a bit of a drag to have a picture that you’d like to use only to have to scrap it because it just doesn’t fit right within the frame provided by the app. Also, the option to edit certain aspects of the filter and what sort of output resolutions for various picture sharing sites are absent. Hopefully Aestesis updates this app to make it that much better by adding these features that iPhone users already enjoy.
Even then, this is a neat little hobby that can be fun and for the artistic Windows Phone users, something to get behind. With Lo-mob taking pictures and making them look vintage or black & white or just plain old is a lot of fun and feeds that little ambition of being a quirky photographer. You can find the app for $1.99 in the marketplace.
