Tilt me, Shift me

As I’ve stated waaay too many times on this blog, I am by no means a photographer. Or a photoshop wiz. But I like it. A lot. And so does my husband which makes us two peas in a pod. I read a lot of photography blogs and have noticed a cool technique that a lot of my favs have been using recently. After some research and more blog browsing, I saw that these photographers are taking part in “tilt-shift photography”. If you’re a photographer reading my blog, don’t bother reading this as I’m sure I’m about to butcher your art. But if you’re a laymen like me, check this out! Tilt shift is a technique that blurs portions of the image with the use of a special lens, putting more focus on the predominate feature in the photograph. These special lenses cost a blooming fortune, but they can actually tilt (rotation of the lens) and shift (movement of the lens parallel to the image plane), creating some pretty interesting imagery.

Scott found a photoshop tutorial online (shocker! our new favorite thing!) and we got to cracking on creating a faux tilt-shift effect on some of our own photos (like this one from Santa Monica). Sure, the effect isn’t quite the same as the professionals, but it was fun nonetheless acting like we were creating something awesome on a lazy Sunday morning. This is our attempt at an example of tilt-shift miniature faking, or smallgantics, which takes a picture taken from a high vantage point and makes it look like the scene is a miniature model. My favorite book growing up was The Borrowers, so I’m slightly insane for all things mini. Miniature shampoo bottles, David the gnome; you name it!

We did the same effect (well, Scott worked his magic and I very enthusiastically watched) on a picture from a Panthers’ game we went to a couple years back. It’s like we’re giants in a little world of tiny football players!

We also played around with another picture of Santa Monica. We learned that people really add to the miniature affect, but as an example of plain ol’ tilt-shift, we think this one looks pretty rad (albeit fake). Any fun photo tricks you’d care to share?

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