SubscribeThrough the Viewfinder (Photography)
Posted in Visual, Art, Photography on August 30th, 2007. By Ona Vinyamata.
[Detail of “Fuschia“, from Russ Morris]
History has witnessed how we humans can’t never get enough of experimenting with the images we perceive, creating new ones.
Photoshop and other computer applications have eased things a lot, but we end up trying it with our own hands. And it has its logic… doesn’t someone that discovers a passion for photography with a digital camera, end up changing it for a reflex to play it Manual? It’s a matter of control.
Anyways, every experiment is interesting for what it has to tell us about getting where we want to get. Or getting where we don’t know we could get. But we find creativity everywhere and somehow this blog is about selecting what we believe to be a contribution to new aesthetic worlds.
Through the Viewfinder technique (mostly known as Ttv) opens the door to a wonderful world of saturated squared-images with a unique look thanks to the way they are captured: through the viewfinder.
TtV is the photographic technique of taking a picture of the viewfinder of a second camera. The “top camera” (the one we are using to actually take the picture) can perfectly be a Digital SLR and needs a macro lens to focus on the viewfinder of the second camera. This second camera (or “bottom camera”) is usually a twin lens reflex (TLR), like a Kodak Duaflex (you can find one online for around 20$).
Between the two cameras we use a tube or contraption, a channel construction made of paper or whatever materials are readily available. This tube avoids excess of light when shooting from the top camera to the viewfinder of the bottom camera.
The pictures that turn out from this process preserve the black frame from the viewfinder, vivid colors and a very nice and unique texture from the dust and dirt found on the viewfinder lenses and mirrors of the vintage cameras used as bottom cameras. This is probably what makes them more special, along with the voyeuristic look, because even when you don’t know how exactly an image like these ones has been captured… you have the feeling that the photographer was hiding somewhere. Behind a contraption, in this case.
We specially like these TtV images: “day’s end” by P. Tumbleweed, “late evening walk” by Teddy, “Fuschia” by Russ Morris, “Boy On Chair” by Mr. E and “Waiting” by Grant Hamilton.
Related Links
* Through the Viewfinder Flickr Group.
* Noise and Dust Through the Viewfinder Flickr Group.
* Tutorial by Russ Morris: “how to build a contraption”, “taking the picture”, post-processing, resources, “cleaning the lenses” and glossary on TtV.
No Comments
No comments yet.
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL