Funtastic Plastic: Thoughts on "Lens Flair"

Finally finished one of the many photography books, I've "collected". Here's the first of one of the many reviews I'll be doing. Actually, I don't like calling them reviews - I associate the word "review" with "judging/ appraising/ assessing". It's more like, sharing with a friend, telling a story to a buddy - just a little chitchat.

Backstory: I was looking for a reasonably price book on lomography which didn't involve 1)having it shipped, 2)"emptying" my wallet and 3)hard-selling more gear. I wanted something that was noob friendly and one that would inspire my inner shutter bug. I scanned the table of contents and flipped through the pages, paid about 15 USD,  brought it home, placed it on the table with a pile of other books and forgot about it. Occasionally, I would browse through it and I finally finished it today. (Yeah, I have ADHD tendencies hehe)

Lens Flair Creative Photo Projects for Toy, Pinhole, Polaroid and Analog Cameras
by Adam Bronkhorst

First impression, this is a great book for newbies! You actually get an idea of what kind of pictures you are going to get with a particular camera or type of film. No need to rely on your imagination, unlike when you read the "press kit" with the standard product description together with a few sample pics thrown in. There are a lot of examples, mostly pictures taken with Lomography's cameras, mixed with Polaroid, vintage Yashica and vintage Olympus. Adding to its newbie friendliness factor, is the explanation of jargon such as "push/pull processing", "flocking", "solarography", etc. 

Chapters are arranged by project and start with sample photos, followed by a "how, what, when" section. In other words, it's easy on the eyes and on your neurons. No brain squeezing, technical mumbo jumbo here. Projects cover types of film, film processing, filters/color gels/flash, multi-lens, multiple exposure, long exposure, microclicks and others. The book also gives ideas on how to come up with themes and subjects for shooting. DIYs include constructing a pinhole camera, using masks and modding toy cameras. 

True, that it's contents maybe found on the internet - especially on lomography.com or other lomo inspired websites/blogs but those contents are scattered around the web, which I consider to be taxing or chaotic. The OC in me that likes this book a lot, everything is organized in one little package and the hidden rebel in me loves this book's unstructured, non-conformist take on photography. 

Lens Flair is a bag of lomo tricks disguising as a book. It really brings out the "fanstastic plastic" in toy cameras. 

(I have no commercial affiliation with the book's author or publisher)