Going Retro - The Growing Interest In Vintage Photography

It started with vintage fashion, artwork and home wares. Then the craze moved to music, with collectors everywhere seeking out vinyl records for a bit of retro cool. Now the enthusiasm for all things vintage has trickled down into the realm of photography, with both amateur and professional photographers seeking ways to lend their photos an air of authenticity with a white instant border or grainy overlay.

Even poor-quality cameras and photos from decades ago now have something of a cult fan base, with many old-school camera models often selling for hundreds of dollars on online auction sites. Thankfully, with modern technology and a huge, ever-growing range of fun applications, anyone can get instantly-artsy retro photos. Aside from the huge number of mobile applications available, here's a list of options to make your photos a little more interesting:.

" Pre-set camera modes - Forget simple black & white, negative, or sepia colour effects. Many people don't realise that digital cameras available today, such as the Canon EOS 60D, still offer built-in creative art filters such as soft focus, toy camera, grainy black & white, and Polaroid effects, so you can easily take unique, vintage-style photos on your compact digital camera or digital SLR.

" Photo editing software - depending on how in-depth you want to go with your vintage photo apps, there are a number of programs that you can download to your Mac or PC. Poladroid is a free downloadable desktop program for making random, old-style photographs with a white instant border. For more control over how your photos turn out, CameraBag is an inexpensive program which lets you layer different effects and borders, with additional filters available on their website.

" Free online services - Services such as Phix and Picnik offer in-browser options for those who don't want to download programs onto their desktops. There's a huge range of customisable editing options, or you can just hit the 'random' button and let the program do all the work.