Learning how to apply TTV to photos and to my life…

Wow is all I can say. Last night I was looking at some photos on etsy like this one and I was saying, how on earth did they do that? So I looked at some more photos and realized they all said “TTV” or “Through The Viewfinder” on them. If you were like me and not sure what TTV or fake TTV is, I now know it is just the addition of the black border and gritty texture to the picture to make it look OLD like it was taken on a viewfinder camera from the 30’s. I googled TTV and how to make it with out actually owning an old school viewfinder camera and I came upon this tutorial.

If you know basic photoshop skills it is actually very simple to do! There are even fake TTV groups on flickr that have free ttv filters you can download and use in photoshop. Needless to say I was having way to much fun trying out all sorts of different filters and things on some older shots I had taken like this cabbage picture below and raindrop plant picture above.

I also added a pink scratched texture layer to the top photo but erased most of the center part to give more light on the rain drops and plant.

I am finding myself so drawn to things that are all gritty, textured and old, like the rusty fences. When I used to paint with acrylics, and even watercolors, I would use tons of harsh strokes with wild contrasting colors, like this one I did in college and make it really messy, like some outside force had taking control of arm and refused to paint politely.

After I got married and stopped painting for awhile, it seemed like the strong aggressive tendencies went away and I needed to be ‘polite and clean’ for a time- I am not really sure what that means but that is how I can think of it (not that my husband imposed any of that on me, I think it was just my own process of my old self dying away so that I could find myself again in the context of the relationship). So I started sewing perfect shapes with very minimal picture styles, which were very nice aswell but something always felt like it was missing- .

Well, I can feel the lioness coming back up from the depths and the grit and dirt and texture are resurfacing. We will see what happens, a blending of my deep old messy self with my new role as a mother and wife- room to be dirty and chaotic in my art but also the need for cleanliness and organization in my life… hmmm. I have also been trying to let go of perfectionism lately too, but that is for another post!