With the recent opening of a Lomography store in Toronto, I've been thinking about lo-fi photography a bit more than usual. Although I like to fiddle with film every once in a while, it's been ages since I've done so. I suppose this is a function of always having one project or another on the go with my digital camera, but I nevertheless feel like I'm robbing myself of some fun. To make up for this -- at least by proxy -- I started looking for Holga shots in the blogTO Flickr pool.

In fact, I spent some time searching for Lomo stuff too, but there was a glut of digitally filtered images on offer, which on this occasion wasn't what I was after. There's a sort of instant-nostalgia created by the leaky light-chamber of a Holga, and though I'm not a purist, I'm still not convinced that Photoshop work can quite reproduce this effect.

While not to everyone's taste, these from-the-hip photographs of Toronto strike me as the perfect topic for a Friday photo essay. Lead photo by sarnya.

Photo by Duchamp.

Photo by .natalie.

Also by .natalie.

Photo by Oh Lenna (Photolena).

Also by Oh Lenna (Photolena).

Photo by moonwire.

Photo by Henry Roxas.