Lunchtime Challenge – Fake Tilt Shift Photography

posted by Nicola - 12:29 03/05/11

The lunchtime challenge has evolved from being a '30 minute challenge' to a 'do it whenever you can in your spare time and spend as long as required challenge!'

The challenge this time was to produce some fake tilt shift photography.

What is tilt shift photography?

Tilt shift is a photographic technique that gives you the impression that the real scene you’re looking at is actually a photograph of a miniature scale model.

Tilt shift lenses focus the 'tilt' on the image plane, the part of the image that appears sharp in focus, and the rest of the image 'shifts' or blurs. This simulates the depth of field used in close up photography, hence giving the illusion of the scene being miniature.Tilt shift lenses are very expensive, but who needs them when you have Photoshop!?

You can emulate a tilt shift lens very effectively in Photoshop by using lens blur and increasing the saturation to give a brighter colour balance.

Here is a tutorial on how to achieve the result:

http://www.tiltshiftphotography.net/photoshop-tutorial.php

The only rule of this challenge was – "You must use your own photograph".

Here are the results! Nick had the most votes for his photos of Shanghai, Machoo, and Tromso. Matt was a close second with the Great Wall.