Photography & Digital ArtAUG 19, 2010

Real World In Miniature: 20 Tilt Shift Photos

TomAuthor

These cool photos you are about to see are not miniature toys or models. Nor is it macro photography. It’s the real world in Tilt Shift photography!

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A little bit on how tilt-shift works: by using a certain lens and shifting the camera’s perspective, the depth of field is reduced which draws these images in and creates the optical illusion. It can be achieved in two ways: 1) optically or 2) digitally with some photo manipulation.

If you want to the miniature effect the cheap way, there are always some photography hacks where all you have to do is defocus certain areas of the photo. Although these basic digital photo editing techniques can give you results similar to those achieved with tilt, the term should be used only when the effect is produced optically. The digital result is often called ‘fake tilt-shift’ or ‘miniature faking’. There are lots of simple Photoshop tutorials and photography tricks, and you can start here.

But if you happen to be rich, then buy some tilt-shift lenses as Real Tilt-Shift photography requires, unsurprisingly, a tilt-shift lens. The lens is typically used in architectural photography where it can maintain the straight lines of buildings without skewing the perspective. It’s also been used for special effects in movies too.

Here are 20 beautiful examples of the real world being turned into a miniature one. Can you tell which of these interesting photos are fakes and which are the real ones?