[The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind] First Attempt... FAIL!

Today's picture is not a good one. In fact, I am not even going to post it to my Flickr pages because I feel it would seriously damage what little --yet positive-- reputation I've been able to foster there.

However, I wanted to post it here because this is my absolute first attempt at actual tilt-shift photography (or miniature-faking).

I love the tilt-shift effect on photos and how it can make the big look like a teeny-tiny model. There is just something so cool about it and how it can take something like a big menacing city and render it down to something out of a Godzilla movie or model train set.

Anyway, here are some great examples of the tilt-shift technique. And, as for my current favorites, there's this one, and this one.

Don't worry, though. I know, pretty much, where I went wrong on this one. In order to confuse that connection between your eyes and your brain, this picture should have been taken from someplace higher, a little farther away, and I should have done this on a sunny day (nice, sharp shadows really help the illusion). Unfortunately, this is the only picture I had that came even close to fitting at least some of the requirements (I think one, actually. It's far away).

It's close though...

The cool thing is, you don't need a special or big, fancy camera or a special lens (though they do make perspective altering lenses, but I think mostly architects and landscape photogs buy them, and, aside from the Lensbaby products, they are not cheap. No. Seriously. They're crazy pricey). All you need is the right sort of picture, and a photo-editing program which is capable of layers and layer masks (I had to freakin' hunt for a plug-in for my Photoshop Elements, but I eventually found one).

The original layer remains untouched (though it can help to brighten it or saturate it a bit to make it just a wee bit different from the copy), and the copy gets blurred a bunch. Then, apply a layer mask to the blurry copy and erase the blur from the bits which you want people to focus on.

Anywho... I'm sure that before too long, you'll see me slap something up here that fits in the Tilt-shift genre. I just need to snap the right picture.

So, I'm sorry this isn't the greatest of shots, but I thought it might be neat to invite you along on this learning process with me.

-DP


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Posted By Dan to The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind at 4/26/2008 08:16:00 PM