Well it is if you’re into expressive and unconventional photography using real film. And it doesn’t get any more expressive and unconventional than when you use a Lomo camera.

These cameras started out in the 1980s as a chunky Soviet copy of a Japanese compact camera. When a group of Austrian art students stumbled on it and started literally shooting from the hip, they got some rather special looking results. Lomography was born.

(As a complete side note, Lomo production was safeguarded, and ramped up to meet its new international market, with the help of a deputy mayor called Vladimir Putin.)
Ola Carlberg, Art Director at Sandberg Trygg, is a big fan of Lomo cameras and a leading light in the world of Lomography – now a worldwide community sharing the results of their analogue adventures. Digitally of course – they’re not stupid.

Ola has been into photography forever – digital and real film – but with a Lomo camera in his hand he entered new territory, “In today’s fast and perfect digital world, it’s liberating to create something that isn’t. Photography becomes more of a »controlled accident« as you experiment with film and double exposures. It’s about capturing the feeling behind what you are seeing instead of simply taking a picture. And it’s also a big thing not being able to see the result immediately – you have to trust yourself that you’ve taken a good picture.” Above you can see a selection of Ola’s pictures. Click here to see his entire collection.

And what can we learn from Lomography? Well, the Golden Rules of Lomography say it all and can be easily transferred to other creative media – perhaps even to a way of living life itself. I’ll leave you with them:

1. Take your Lomo everywhere you go
2. Use it anytime – day and night
3. Lomography is not an interference with your life but a part of it
4. Get as close as possible to the objects of your lomographic desire
5. Don’t think
6. Be fast
7. You don’t have to know beforehand what is on your film
8. Nor afterwards
9. Shoot from the hip
10. Don’t worry about rules