Project 365: TtV photography and a new toy

So I have a new obsession, a subset of my 365 obsession, which in itself is a subset of my photography obsession, which, it might be argued, is a subset of my “living my life out loud on the Internet” obsession. My new obsession is TtV (through the viewfinder) photography, in which you take a photograph by shooting through the viewfinder of another, usually vintage, camera.

This picture, my photo of the day for last Sunday, is taken through the viewfinder of a camera that I’ve had since I was a kid, my uncle’s old Kodak Brownie Hawkeye.

But this one is taken through the viewfinder of my latest toy, a Kodak Duaflex IV that I won on eBay this weekend. (It’s the first auction I’ve ever won! I bid on and won a lot of six vintage cameras including a a Baby Brownie Special, and a Brownie Reflex Synchro, THREE Brownie Hawkeyes including a flash unit — that’s in addition to the Brownie Hawkeye I already own, mind you. The other cameras are in middling to rough condition, as you might expect for a lot of vintage cameras, but the one I really wanted, the Kodak Duaflex IV, was in near-mint condition including an original leather case. (You can click through to see what it looks like, but mine is in much better condition.) I got it all for the stellar price of $10.99!

So now instead of murky, fuzzy TtV pictures like the apple above, I can shoot clear and dreamy ones like this one:

I am absolutely fascinated with TtV photography now, and have a half-written post discussing it in more detail for next week. (Edited to add: TtV how-to post is now live!)

The rest of my pictures are all over the map this week. There is nothing even remotely resembling a theme, or a coherent narrative. There’s the obligatory cute baby shot, for example:

And there’s this one. I’d stepped out of my office on the way home into a cool, rainy afternoon, and suddenly there was this massive moving sea of umbrellas crossing the street in front of me… some sort of Japanese tour group, from the look of it. I tried to get a few shots, but they moved surprisingly quickly, and by the time I hopped up on a bench for a higher vantage point (in a short skirt and heels, no less, what a sight I must have been myself!) they’d moved on. This is an *almost* shot that didn’t quite capture what I wanted, but was still good enough for the POTD.

I took this one the same day I wrote the post grumbling about how difficult the homework-dinner-prep-baby-wrangling part of the day is, and you’d never know it from their inherent cuteness how stressful it can all be! But lookit the grip Lucas has on that pencil — not bad for a 19-month-old!

I’m really pleased with how this shot of Tristan’s hockey skates turned out. I think the black and white emphasizes the shapes and the textures, which is what makes this shot look particularly interesting. (IMHO, that is!)

And this bike caught my eye when I was going for coffee one morning… I’m not sure why but something about the shape of it appealed to me, out of the dozens of chained-up bikes I walk past every day downtown. It was a drizzly grey morning anyway, so desaturating it to b&w wasn’t much of a stretch, but then I used Photoshop to remove the b&w from the bell, leaving it the original gold colour. I like how all the lines in the picture lead the eye toward the bell.

This was yesterday’s picture and yes, it is an editorial comment on how my day went. I don’t know why some days fall apart, and why some days go so spectacularly sideways, but yesterday was one of them, from start to finish. I’m glad it’s over!

And finally, this week happened to include the end of September. In case you haven’t been paying attention, here’s a September recap in the form of the monthly mosaic:

September was a good month. A long month, but a good month. Expect October to be stuffed with shots of fall colour (if the rain ever stops) and more TtV experiments!