So I’ve come across tiltshiftmaker.com a few places recently, and finally decided to try it myself. And sure enough, it’s pretty awesome.
I made this (original here) from a picture I took from the top of the John Hancock tower in downtown Chicago a few years ago:
…and this, from a picture of a burned out car near Dete, Zimbabwe (original here):
It’s pretty skookum. The concept being that the extremely shallow depth of field (usually done via tilt-shift photography, but mimicable in Photoshop) makes it look like they’re miniatures or toys. Cars and people end up looking particularly toy-like. I want a lensbaby so I can take my own pics like this from scratch, rather than depending on the power of Photoshop (or, in my ultra-lazy case, the internet).
Fun stuff.
It’s like playing Sim City.
Those are cool, but unfortunately, this is becoming such an überfad right now that I’m already sick and tired of it. Even the latest Popular Photography magazine had to throw in an article on how to do it. And since it is so simple to do in Photoshop, everyone is doing it.
That’s just my two cents about the whole thing in general. But I don’t mean to take anything away from your having fun with it. :-)
Agreed — like I said, I came across the site I used a zillion times…
But I still had to play with it, cuz hey, fun stuff. :D
The problem of course, with any fad like this for that matter, is that there are legitimate uses for it and places where it would otherwise be really cool, but when it becomes vogue of the day, even legitimate uses are scoffed at.
It is a pretty cool effect. But what really amazes me more is the opposite- how they can take the miniatures of towns, cars, even explosions, and make them look absolutely real in a movie.
One thing that I thought would be really cool to do with something like this that couldn’t even be done with physical tilt-shift, is to take a picture of you and your significant other dressed in Barbie and Ken type clothes, do a miniature-fake, and then paste it over a real toy Barbie background scene (the extremely difficult part there is getting the blur to match exactly) and thus creating a picture of the two of you as dolls. Would make absolutely hilarious wedding invites.