Logo
The occasionally-updated blog of M. Scott Smith

A Quick Experiment with Tilt-Shift 🔗

Tilt-shift is a photographic technique that manipulates the plane of focus and perspective in an image. This is done by both rotating the lens and forcing a shallow depth of field, typically with a large aperture. You can learn more about tilt-shift on this Wikipedia page. In practice, tilt-shift can be used to manipulate the viewer into focusing on certain parts of an image.

Tilt-shift can also be used as a type of special effect, to make "real life" elements appear like miniature models -- for example, like a model railroad. You can do this by simulating the effects of using a macro lens on "full scale" photographic subjects. This can be done after the fact, using a tool such as Photoshop.

Although I generally do not use Photoshop to manipulate images (only to correct color errors), I decided to perform a quick experiment with tilt-shift on two photos I took in early October along the road in Idaho. I only spent a minute on each one, so these are not great examples, but you can start to see the tilt-shift effect. In each case, the subjects (a rental Ford Explorer and a dilapidated old house) are "full size," but by manipulating the depth of field after the fact to simulate the effects of a macro lens, these items appear much smaller than they really are -- like miniature models.



 





Elsewhere 🌐

  1. DCSki
  2. Facebook

Archives 🗄

  1. 2023 (3)
  2. 2022 (3)
  3. 2021 (1)
  4. 2019 (3)
  5. 2018 (1)
  6. 2016 (1)
  7. 2015 (17)
  8. 2014 (15)
  9. 2013 (14)
  10. 2012 (10)
  11. 2011 (15)
  12. 2010 (81)
  13. 2009 (45)
  14. 2008 (63)
  15. 2007 (29)
  16. 2006 (8)
  17. 2005 (18)
  18. 2004 (53)