Faking it!
May 11th, 2009One of the Memphis dudes I happen to know via Twitter, @ismh to be exact, is a wonderful photographer (I just found this out today). His kid is in ICU so he deserves to be in our thoughts, but that’s a different story… Anyway, via his blog he made me aware of a technique I hadn’t seen before, or maybe I had but it just didn’t register with me (until today) to try this myself.
Look at the above image (I didn’t take it, I just photoshopped it). Looks like the Sydney Opera House, right? Notice anything else? It looks like someone built a miniature of it! I do however, don’t know anybody that ever crafted such a thing for me to take a picture of, nor has anyone ever given me a picture of a mini-Sydney (and ironically you get a LARGER version by clicking on the above). This is a photograph of the REAL thing, I just photoshopped it to make it appear like an insanely small replica.
This technique is called “tilt-shift miniature”. It’s a bit of a misnomer, but more about that (maybe) later. It works like this: by taking a photo, and leaving only a very small portion of it in focus, our mind is tricked into believing we are seeing something much smaller. Why does this work?
In Macro photography you take pictures of insanely small things (like flies, dog hairs, boogers — although my boogers can be quite large but I digress) at seemingly impossible magnification levels. Making these things appear much larger than physically possible and with excruciating detail — Ever seen a nose hair magnified 5000 times? One of the side effects of doing this, is that Depth Of Field (what exactly in your photograph is in focus) is extremely limited. That is because to do this kind of thing, you have to get extremely close to the subject (among other things). Imagine holding the lens of a camera less than half an inch away from your car keys!
So by reducing DOF (Depth Of Field) in your image to a stupidly small portion, your brain is tricked into thinking you were standing extremely close to your subject. Knowing that, to do so, and get the entire building in the frame, you would need a lens of a mile in diameter your brain fools you into believing… This must be a miniature replica!
You can further enhance this effect by upping the contrast. This will put harder shadows at places where they normally would not be, and make it look even more like a macro photo. Increase color saturation of the in-focus part and will start to look hand painted.
It works with practically everything! Next time I see a cop on Beale Street I shall squash them underfoot. No just kidding. when some drunk bozo is giving me problems, I’d rather the police officer be life-size.
