thru the murky viewfinder # 1 ~ customized from an iPhone app

gargoyle ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen

Came across a iPhone app which harkened back to a time in the analog era when I started to play around with making pictures of scenes as viewed on the viewfinder screen of a beat up vintage TLR. I messed around with it for a while but never got serious enough to really pursue it.

A fair number of picture makers did take it seriously and enough of a picture making "movement" was established that an enterprising app maker came up with the Viewmatic app. An app designed to produce pictures with "the experience of looking through the viewfinder of a classic film camera". However, like most, dare I write "all", apps which end in "-matic", the user is presented with a canned set of options. Some are good (enough), some not so much.

So, never one to leave almost well enough alone, I scavenged the viewfinder frame and then proceeded to make my own master viewfinder file into which I can drop any picture I desire. The master file has a number of layers - grain, vignette (light and dark), grid, crop guide, etc. - which can be modified and combined to produce a much more custom finished look than I can get from the app. The only effect I have yet to make is a layer which can add the dust and scratches which were part and parcel of an eyed TLR viewfinder screen.

In any event the screwing around beat goes on. Round and round. Where it stops, nobody (including me) knows. Next up, the Polaroid emulsion transfer look.