Combining layers of gaussian flares, blurs, and shapes we built six fantastic toy camera styled effects. They each exhibit different ideas that we encountered in our research and exploration.
The pack as a whole was designed to conquer any scenario you could find yourself in. The range of effects is vast, with different colors presenting and exaggerating themselves in each filter. 'Valley' calls upon the cooler days of the year by pushing the envelope of blues in the photo. There's a subtle overlay vignette that wraps your subject and rather than darkening the borders with pure black, darkens the colors of your photo. By doing it this way were able to effectively make dynamic effects, altering the colors of your photo in different directions, exaggerating them, rather than muddying them up with forced colors.
'Caroline' finds itself at the subtler end of the toy camera spectrum. It calls upon a large orange light leak from the top left corner to convey the ideas of a hot summer day. You can almost hear the sounds of the ocean when this warm glaze washes over your photo accentuating the heat. Around the edges are two layered vignettes, a forced black vignette and an overlay vignette which I discussed earlier. The two combine to create a dramatic darkening around the border of the photo, greatly bringing out the subject matter in the center.
The last important concept to touch on with these toy camera filters are the use of shapes or as we call them, gaussian flares. They're essentially shapes drawn by mathematical equations. We can manipulate ellipses, lines, stars, any oblong shapes you can imagine, and most relevant to toy cameras, diamonds. In the 'Scope' effect you can see long light lines and hazy diamonds at the top left of the image. These are layered shapes that combine to form light leaks in the form of points coming off the edge of the photo and moving towards the center.
We're left with something mesmerizing. 'Scope' shows how the subtle use of these concepts can build ideas up into a fully fledged effect.
The toy camera experiment was a lesson in humility. As my conversation with Warren progressed it was obvious how much more there is to learn and explore in the world of lomography. We can apply effects to our photos, stylize them to our hearts content but it takes true talent and knowledge to handle cameras. But that won't stop us from trying to emulate the beauty of analog photography with our phones. Weather it be the gorgeous warm gradients dipping into the top of 'Amber' or the lime glow spreading gently from the corner of 'Juice' there's something for everyone with these toy camera effects.
You can get the Aviary Toy Camera pack on iOS and Android now.
