After seeing Sydney sider Keith Loutit’s tilt shift videos, which are very intriguing and cute, I set about trying to emulate the effect in photoshop with some success.
For those that haven’t heard of it before, Tilt-Shift is a process in which a photograph of a life-size location or object is manipulated to resemble a photograph of a miniature scale model. Very appealing to the model train set admirers in all of us! By distorting the focus of the photo you can simulate the shallow depth of field normally encountered with macro lenses. This makes the scene seem much smaller than it actually is. Taking the photo from a high angle further enhances the affect of looking down on a miniature. Objects oriented horizontally make better subjects for tilt-shift miniature faking than vertically oriented objects.
You can achieve the tilt shift look by either shooting with a special tilt shift lens, or by manipulating the photo in photoshop. Basically you blur the top and bottom of the photograph so that only the subject is in focus using an editable gradient map, and bump up the contrast of the picture to simulate the harder shadows of a miniature under a light and increase the saturation.
For those of you that wish to try this at home, there is a handy tutorial here which I used for my examples above. Enjoy!
