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Tip: Damage a Disposable Camera to Get a Different Look

Chris Gampat
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05/09/2017
2 Mins read
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Last Updated on 05/09/2017 by Chris Gampat

Photographer Kate Hook is an experimental, creative, modern analog film photographer who loves experimenting with new ideas and tricks. We’ve featured her work here before when she souped her LomoChrome Purple film; and now she’s back with a video on having fun with a disposable camera. While most photographers would scoff at using one due to their plastic lenses and crappy quality, Kate has the idea of being experimental and embracing it. In fact, she takes it even further.

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In the video above, Kate uses a safety pin to scratch the lens up. For anyone that doesn’t know what this does, it can soften an image while also creating a nice lens flare. In fact, it’s recommend that in order to create lens flares, you simply scratch a UV filter. But Kate goes even further. At one point she uses a lighter to heat the pin up so that its effect will be more pronounced.

Then it’s off to shooting for Kate. Disposable cameras tend to have a fixed lens, fixed aperture, built in light meter, and a flash that in most cases just can’t be stopped. So she simply just goes about shooting and shows us what some the results look like.

In my opinion, they’re really cool and very fun. You wouldn’t normally want to do this with a dedicated camera but the lo-fi aesthetic and feel in the images is well worth playing with. This would be fun to try with an Ilford disposable camera.

For more check out Kate’s YouTube video and channel.

Lead photo by Katie Fricker

camera disposable camera fun image kate hook lighter lo-fi Photography safety pin
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Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.