lomo

Tim Caynes' recent post dont touch anything contains a word, lomo, which is new to me. In the post he hyperlinks to some flickr photos as you can see: lomo.
An A9 search gives me this image and leads me to know that lomo is a camera and also a way of photography. The quick def: logo means "shoot from the hip."

This BBC site Gives the full explanation. "What's Lomo? -- In 1991 a group of Viennese students discovered the Lomo Kompakt Automat when on holiday in Prague. This mass-produced Soviet camera was so cheap and easy to use that they shot rolls of film, ignoring the established rules of "good" photography. The resulting snaps were often odd to look at, out of focus and, due to the character of the Lomo lens, garishly coloured. But they were wonderfully fresh. The craze for Lomo spread so fast that when, in 1996, the St Petersburg manufacturers threatened to stop making the camera, Lomographers stepped in to guarantee all future sales. Today the Lomographic Society has embassies across the globe with Lomography.com as its base. Hundreds participate in international Lomo events and add to the ever-growing LomoWorldArchive."

What else to be said?

Well a search in Google Print suggests that lomo is somewhat of a geek phenomenon, thus likely to be in the Caynes domain. A search in Google Print shows the book Essential Blogging

The lomo presents a different way of looking at life. It can make the ordinary extraordinary. Or, for that matter, really crap. Lomographers make it a part of their everyday life and just take the photo - not worrying about looking through the viewfinder - shooting from the hip (or above the head). They're just playing around, and having some fun. (p.99)

So, lomo is one element of the Flickr phenomenon and must be related to the explosion in use of cell phone cameras, no?

Here's one of Tim Caynes' lomos. I chose it because he shot from the hip and it shows a slice of life in Norwich, UK, his home town.