In 2020 more than ever I have gone through my archive of past photos. I recently found quite a lot of good examples of fake miniature photography also know as tilt-shift photography. I used to love creating these when I began shooting over ten years ago.
So I thought I’d put them together in a tilt-shift photography tutorial as I’m on a mission to help others get more creative with their photography.
The main reason for this timely release is that at the moment a lot of people are stuck indoors due to lockdowns of various levels not always able to take new photos or perhaps stuck in a creative rut.
Well I’m here to try save the day and deliver some inspiration and ideas.
In short, creating a tilt-shift effect on photos simulates using a tilt-shift lens.
It creates an optical illusion. It tricks the eye and brain of the viewer into thinking the scene is actually a small scale model when in reality… it’s not.
Before: A normal View
After: What appears to be a miniature scene
Be wary of photo apps which promise you to achieve this in one click… For professional results in anything photography nothing replaces the fine tuning and eye of the experienced artist.
The perfect illusion can only be achieved successfully by carefully making minute adjustments to key aspects such as brightness, white balance, contrast, saturation and depth of field.
I delve fully into this in the video tutorial at the end of this article so stay tuned!
This is a great project if you have old photos you never used, photos sitting there in your hard-drive.
Ideally photos should be shot from a higher angle, such as in the photo below, as this helps create the illusion of the scene being a small scale model viewed from above.
A scale model of The Vatican?
In the video tutorial I assume you have a photo editing software and although I use Photoshop, you could create this effect on your phone using Snapseed for example.
One of my key interests when it comes to creativity is to stop thinking you need much or to spend money to be creative.
Creativity becomes truly exciting and rewarding when given limited resources you remain resourceful and deal with what you have to create something amazing.
I’m actually a trained chef. Just like in the kitchen, you can either go out and buy stuff to reproduce a recipe you read… or you get really good and can come up with the most delicious recipe using only what you have in your kitchen cupboards and fridge.
I choose the latter, that’s what excites me.
Let’s begin with showing you a few more examples of “simulated” tilt-shift photography, all from my archive, and I’ll end with the actual video tutorial:
Fun aren’t they?
Watch this 6mn tutorial if you want to know how it’s done!
I created it hoping it’ll help you discover Photoshop and the fun that can be had “recycling” past photos.
I hope you enjoyed this Tilt-Shift photography tutorial and that it maybe has got your creative juices flowing / sparked a creative idea in you.
I’m also curious to see what you can come up with so be sure to share your results mentioning @nicholasgoodden on either Twitter or Instagram.
Until next time, stay safe everyone.