through the viewfinder

There are a number of photographers who create images by shooting through the viewfinders of old twin lens reflex cameras. These cameras have collected a lot of dust in their viewfinders and they tend to have a lot of light fall off at the edges. The resulting images are thus very dreamlike and look more like fading memories than photographic images. Toy cameras like the Holga and Diana render similar effects.

I happen to have a very old Rolleiflex that I inherited from my uncle that I re-discovered this morning. I immediately popped open the viewfinder to look through it. The view was even worse than many of the images I had seen shot through other viewfinders, but it occurred to me that it would be fun to try this genre nonetheless. The above image is the result of my first attempt. I had to perform a lot of digital clean-up to produce this image due to the condition of the Rolleiflex's viewfinder. Even at that, the quality is very, very poor, but I like the image and can't help but think this technique has potential. Look for more postings of my ongoing experiments.

For further examples and explanations of through the viewfinder photography, here are a few links:

http://www.ttvblog.wordpress.com
http://www.flickr.com/groups/throughtheviewfinder/
http://jennycisney.1000words.kodak.com/default.asp?item=273519