SubscribeThe Tilt-Shift Phenomenon (Photography)
Posted in Visual, Photography, Video on July 28th, 2007. By Ona Vinyamata.
[Detail of “I live in a dollhouse”, by Himitsu]
Last week we focused on diptychs and how they can help our images get closer to reality (to the reality of perception). This week, we’ll center on how tilt-shifting can make reality look unreal (this time reality as the subject of the image and not the process of perceiving it).
Tilt-shift (TS) can be described as a camera lens effect that makes a normal photograph (a wide-view landscape) look like a miniature (a macro shot of a model of a landscape). This effect can be obtained using commercial lenses (as Hartblei or Lens Babies), handmade lenses, or just post-processing and is based in an optical illusion of fake Depth Of Field.
This is not something new. One year a go, around March 2006, TS had its boom amongst amateur and professional photographers, but today it’s still a growing trend and is now starting to be applied also in video.
For now, TS is being used in photography to fool the eye, take clear architecture shots without falling into perspective distortion, help the viewer center attention in a certain spot when shooting wide angled pictures (such as landscapes or sports pics) and to minimize the dramatism of certain shots (convincing the viewer that he’s not looking at the real world).
In video, faking a miniature sounds like going back. How much have science fiction directors struggled to make a model look like the real thing? Now, flying above a fake miniature landscape without using 3D requires a lot of frame by frame work, but looks great. Thom Yorke (Radiohead lead singer) used this effect in a video-clip of his solo album, The Eraser.
Related Links:
* Tutorial on how to tilt-shift a picture using Photoshop.
* Before & after videos of the Tilt-Shift effect applied to a movie.
* Some are trying the opposite: making a miniature look real.
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