Trying Something New
So…I picked up a photography magazine the other day. Can’t remember which one, but it’s around here somewhere… Anyhow… It had this article on creating a really neat optical illusion. You take a normal photograph, and make it look as though the viewer is looking at a miniaturized model of whatever your subject is. So I tried it out…
Desert Diorama
Tiny Sabrina
Paradise, CA and Mt. Tom
I don’t know…it’s pretty neat. I suspect it will be over used and become cliche fairly quickly, but…it’s a neat trick, and can make an interesting image from something you might not otherwise even process.
Let me know what you think, and if you want to know how…I’llbe happy to explain. Or I can find the magazine and tell you what it was. Wish I could remember…
Thanks for reading!
Interrupted Thought Process 
Okay, that’s nifty. I’ve GOTTA know how you did that. Pretty please!
November 6, 2009 at 5:44 pm
Really it was easy. It’s a simple Depth of Field adjustment. I took the picture as I would for a normal landscape…f/22 and the whole nine yards. I processed it for brightness and contrast as normal. Than, I used my DoF adjustment to select ONLY the area around the houses as in focus, and dropped the foreground and background out of focus. It’s really that simple.
It works best if the shot is taken from a high angle, and if you can show some shadows, but neither one is an absolute necessity. It really works because we are not used to seeing things that are large with such shallow focus. It’s the illusion that my camera is very close…the illusion of a macro shot…that makes it look miniaturized…
November 7, 2009 at 9:59 am
Chris, that image of Paradise is just amazing. I am curious now! I’ll google to see if you did this in-camera. Cool.
November 10, 2009 at 1:16 am
No, Jan, it is not an in-camera technique. Just a simple DoF adjustment in PP.
November 10, 2009 at 8:23 am