Tilt-shift photos r.o.c.k.

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Ever since I saw a set of photos about 18 months ago, where the photographer had taken shots of world landmarks from a helicopter using a tilt-shift lens I was hooked on the crazy model-like images the lens produces and wanted to experiment in making my own, without having to splash on the a special lens, and an SLR to fit it to.

I had a stab at it too, but the blur filters in Photoshop, combined with gradient masks didn't really work - you couldn't control the amount of blurriness, only the amount of opacity to the global blurring you were applying. I could blur parts of the image to create the feeling of depth, but not the amount of bluring. Annoyed, I left it on a shelf in my mind for another time.

Then, I was at Nicky's MA photo exhibition at the LCC the other week and a set of toy-like Milton Keynes photos that were one of her colleagues' contibution to the exhibition used the lens (I thought)and reminded me just how cool I thought those kind of shots were. After she let slip they'd actually been faked in post-production (shh) my interest was once more piqued and I wondered just how people might be doing this effect...

Finally - the other day whilst browsing the stories on Digg.com I chanced upon an 'idiot's guide to tilt-shift' tutorial and it all fell into place. Shock horror! There is a new(ish) blur tool hidden away in CS2 that I had missed!
Much Woo-ing and Yay-ing ensued.

Suffice to say I've been pretty addicted the past few days rifling through my photo archive for suitable shots to doctor, and tweaking the technique (which is easy on the face of it) to get the best results.

Have a look. I think they're pretty rinky-dink...

My tilt-shift photoset on Flickr



Of course - everyone's doing it now. Search for 'fake tilt shift' on Google or Flickr and you'll find lots of good, bad and indifferent attempts. Pfft. So much for keeping abreast of Photoshop improvements. I could have been on the cutting edge!

Tags:Tilt Shift