miniature photography

Recently, a few photographers have begun taking cityscape images utilizing shift/tilt lenses. In essence these lenses provide perspective control capabilities that are primarily used to correct perspective distortion when shooting large buildings from the ground, etc. View cameras also have this shift/tilt capability. The cityscape images are usually taken from a distance, then with the special lens, the blurring and focus of the image is altered in such a way as to make the cityscapes look like images of toy miniature sets. A recent article in a photo magazine provided some guidelines about simulating this effect utilizing the all-powerful Photoshop tool. While this technique now threatens to become ubiquitous, it IS a fun one and I could not help but try this out on of my own images shot from a skyscraper in Houston on a recent trip. It is always nice to add another "trick" to one's photographic "arsenal" for just the right interpretation of an image.