TTV Shoot

I just finished attending  a 2-day live-stream workshop of Jeremy Cowart via CreativeLive.  The topic was experimental photography - trying new ideas and keeping your photography fresh.  Great workshop, Jeremy showed us a lot of great ideas, and some neat tricks.  The one I'm playing with in this blog is shoot your subject through the viewfinder of an old, vintage camera.

The best cameras seem to be those with larger viewfinders (remember the old Rolleiflex box camera?), but Jeremy's first set with this trick seemed to be a very small camera with a small viewfinder.  He created some really cool images with this setup.  During today's session, he also used a camera more like the Rolleiflex mentioned above.

I liked the idea so much I thought I'd try it.  It just so happens I have one of my Dad's old cameras - a Graflex Custom Graphic medium format camera.  I remember many unhappy times as a child, waiting while Dad fiddled with settings, loaded film cartridges, tweaked my posture, my position, and grumbled over my frown or frozen smile.  Now, when I look at it I just grin, but back then... JEEZ....

For this post I wanted to include a shot of the my Dad's camera.  So, in keeping with the experimental nature of Jeremy's workshop, I played with hand-painting the camera against a medium gray seamless.  First, I painted the camera with a straight tungsten flashlight with a black cinefoil snoot.  I then followed up by painting the area around the camera with a blue gel on the same flashlight.  This was my result, after merging a few select layers in Photoshop:

(ok, it needs a little work - but hey, it's my first time!)

For the shoot, I set Dad's camera on one tripod, and posed Tammie in front of an east facing window with the blinds down.  I hung some filmy black material over the blinds to create some texture to give it a better look.  I used my Hoodman loup to check focus on the back glass of the Graflex, and then scan the whole frame to ensure I had things set as I wanted.  I had a touch of nostalgia, imagining myself doing this back in the 50's when this kind of thing was commonplace.

Next, I set up a strobe with an 11" reflector, set it up high and aimed down at Tammie's face.  Using just the modelling light, I set the camera's white balance to 2800 Kelvin.  Here's what I got:

 

One of the cool things about my Dad's old camera is the tilt-shift capability of the lens.  I took advantage of that when I set up this shot.  I angled the lens away from Tammie's face so her left eye was even more blurred than the wide open aperture was giving me.  As you can see, even her nose is also significantly blurred, and just her right eye is in sharp focus. 

Something you'd want to do with a live model?  Maybe not, but as a first attempt I think it looks quite cool!

Notice also, the daylight streaming through the window behind her turns a nice blue when I set the white balance to match the tungsten modeling light I was using.  Nice!!!

Here's a pull-back shot, which I also like quite a bit as well...

Kinda cool, yes?

An interesting trick/technique, which I'll be exploring further.  There's dirt and spots on the back glass as well as the lens, and I think that adds to the effect so I'm not planning on cleaning it as long as I'm using it this way.


Hope you enjoyed...