Through the Viewfinder, again

I have a confession to make. Early this year I started to get pretty bored, photographically speaking. Part of it was that I was so busy with all the crazy wedding hooplah and just didn’t have time to shoot, but part of it was a pretty blah reaction to the work that I was doing and the work that I was viewing. It felt like every time I would sign on flickr, the thing that was “most interesting” pretty much always seemed like something out of Alice in Wonderland – super-saturated, unnaturally sharp, composed exactly on the 3-3-3 grid and everything just felt sort of done. I have nothing against Photoshop or enhancing images (at all. obviously.) but I just couldn’t seem to take any photographs that I felt were interesting on their own accord. I tried all the things I usually do to break out of an artistic rut and nothing seemed to work.

Then somewhere I stumbled upon the acronym “ttv” and feel promptly in love with the image attached. It was the opposite of most of what I was seeing (and creating) – square cropped, textured, fuzzy, light vignetting at the edges. Imperfect. Haunting. I ran to google, bought an old Kodak Duaflex II from ebay that same day and began my arduous journey with through the viewfinder shooting.

The format was a huge challenge at first. The set up is beyond unwieldy, all of my instincts were backwards (literally backwards, it flips the image around), focusing is hit or miss and I had to get well above my subject just to shoot at eye level. I was dragging chairs and climbing trees and standing on my tip-toes on perilous stacks of whatever was around.

None of the “rules” I had unwittingly subscribed to applied and so I didn’t use them. I had to let go of getting the perfect shot and learn to just be thankful if it was in focus. It’s pretty impossible to expose correctly and light leaks in everywhere. It sounds sort of masochistic when I write it out like that, but it doesn’t feel that way -  it feels like I’m really CREATING again – that I’m making something beautiful, not just clicking a button.

I’ve shared some of my early photos here before, but what I haven’t shared is that since I started, it’s pretty much all I want to do. I hemmed and hawed before deciding that yes, I would be taking an old camera and beat up cardboard tube with me to Costa Rica on our honeymoon. And so I wandered around the country looking like this.

My cardboard tube is destroyed thanks to all the sand and water and wear and quite a few people came up to me wondering if I was crazy (Excuse me, but I just have to know, why are you taking pictures of the sand for 20 minutes??) but the photos I’ve brought back spark something in me.

And it feels just lovely.

(Don’t worry Mom, I also took some “normal” photos).