I’ve known Sarah Zucker for some time through her photography online. her essay, On Lomography echoes many of the sentiments regarding “Lomography” that I’ve been feeling.

Other “Lomographers” inspired me to begin capturing intimate and mundane moments in my life on film. I shared my photos on lomo.org and lomo.us, two online bulletin boards, and shared visions with other lomographers. We started an occasional tradition of “LOMOCrawls”, photo get-togethers open to anyone with a creative eye and any sort of camera.

The best description I’ve found for what Lomography means to me is online at http://www.intransient.com/lomography/.

The LOMO is well suited to my style of photography but any camera works well, as long as you take it with you everywhere and just shoot – don’t try to think your way through the shot.

While we were shooting, experimenting, and exploring non-photography, Lomography became a Big Business. When I purchased my first LOMO from a Russian seller on eBay in 2000, Lomography was a relatively unknown niche in photography. Now, there are retail Lomography storefronts in major cities, big-name retailers and impressive markups. Thanks to the Lomographic Society, I’m sure some hipsters are shooting with film for the first time.

My problem with Lomography is this: spontaneous photography isn’t tied to a brand. Nor is creative vision. You can take wonderful “Lomographs” with a camera phone, toy camera, junk store camera or SLR using the same “rules of Lomography”.

You can’t sell creativity, just the tools to enable it.