through the viewfinder

A long time ago I stumbled across the art of Ttv photography, or 'through the viewfinder' photography, and for me it was one of those 'wowee' moments "I want to do that!" I thought... and for a long time that's all it was; I would think about it every now and then, an idea just idling in the recesses of my mind.

Then a few months ago it came bubbling up again; but this time I got serious, and I found myself a beautiful argo flex 75.

So what is this Ttv? I hear you all ask... Usually after I've just been asked 'whether my (new) camera works' and 'if I can get film for it?' to which I reply, oh no, I don't want it to actually shoot film (although I could if I wanted to)... I want it for 'through the viewfinder' photography.

Well for all of you that have asked (and for those of you that are now wondering) Ttv photography is where you compose your photograph using one camera and then you use another camera to take a photo of the first cameras viewfinder; which is why you often see beautiful TLR (twin lens reflex) cameras being used as the first camera, they can be held at waist height and you look down to see the viewfinder on the top of the camera. Then second camera, that you take a photograph of the viewfinder with, is usually a digital camera.

One of the things that you will generally notice first with Ttv is the funny black sleeve that often appears over the bottom camera, although it may look a little strange, it really is just a way to cut the glare on the viewfinder, enabing you to take a clearer picture of it.

Since I had already received my argo flex for my birthday, my present request from my kids was a sheet of black cardboard and a roll of cloth gaffer-tape. I then spent Friday evening amongst my supplies, cutting and fitting my 'contraption'. It still needs the gaf tape applied to toughen it up, thus making it more portable, but as I've already discovered, it does the trick.

So now, once you've taken your photo all you will see on your display screen is a sea of black with a square floating in there somewhere - this is where your photo editor comes in. It's not hard, I just download my image onto my computer, then in iPhoto (or you could use Photoshop, or similar) I rotate and straighten my little square, then I crop it leaving just the tiniest border of black around the edge of it, and voilà - one Ttv photograph.

That's it! And I think that the results are stunning...

If you are interested, as I was, in this Ttv stuff, then there are so many resources online that you can look at : the one that started me off was Andrea's stunning article here (she also links to heaps of useful stuff at the bottom of her post, like the indispensable 'contraption' template that I based my contraption on, and flickr groups that you can join to share your pictures)

I would seriously love to hear if any fellow Melbournians have been giving this a go, or would like to have a go - how cool would it be to all head out with our 'Ttv rigs' together?