New Fascination: The Diana Cameras

Over the weekend, I was in Södermalm, the more relaxed-trendy-creative neighborhood south of Stockholm, and naturally wondered into a second-hand store. The place seemed very popular and had a lot of gorgeous things in the windows. Not needing anymore clothes, I walked back to the hodge-podge area thinking of kitschy souvenirs where my eyes slipped over to a Diana F+ More True Tales & Short Stories hardback book in a cute size. Oddly there were 2 copies. I took the one for 40 krona and was happily reading and learning about little plastic, highly collectible, historical (late 60s), old-school, analog (means it needs 35mm film) cameras and the style of photos they produce. Not sure of how the name Diana for these toy-plastic cameras first came about; the first camera was the Diana, then the Diana+, the DianaF+, and there are the many variations that are replicas of the Diana that have since been brought to the market.

I also learned a new word: lomography. Lomography is defined as is a photographic image style, an analog camera movement and a community facilitated by The Lomographic Society International.

It is not true our photo-sharing culture these days has digitally rebirthed a similar style via Instagram, whereby a filter transforms the look-? Once you see photos from these cameras, you will see what I'm talking about... Although I've not had a chance to dig through opinions and forums, I speculate a slight difference is the concentration placed on capturing the moment and telling a story rather than fiddling with a bunch of knobs, lens changes and settings. And so be it simple and instant, like the cell phone cameras most of us are using nowadays, I feel locked in the limits of mine, sort of like a pin-hole and/or with light leaks, for what a phone camera can do and work my way artistically around that.

Most forefrontedly, here is my take on this beautiful, blurry-soft, dreamy-toned world that Diana cameras are known for utilizing my 2-year old LG Smart phone. Photo editing has been done deliberately using mainly the Photo Filters and Lighting Effects (sometimes I add Blur and sometimes Noise) in Photoshop CS2, version 9.0.

And there you are. And here I stand—with my heart wide open to sharing with you my visions. Thank you for being here on my journey this month and always....Xo, Sharon