I came across this post-processing technique while researching topics for Photo Monday a couple of months ago. The idea is to simulate a very shallow depth of field in a large scale scene (typically only present in close-up photos), which gives the impression that the scene is miniature (like a model train instead of a real train). I usually don’t like post-processing techniques that alter the photo too much or that make it seem like something that it’s not, but it caught my attention; I think it gives an interesting effect. Apparently, there is a way to achieve this with a lens, but you’ll need what is called a tilt-shift lens (cha-ching $$). You can read more about Tilt-Shift photography on Wikipedia.
As always, let me know what you think!
Strachan House, a.k.a. Pink Hotel, providing us with a lot of excitement, as depicted here, on a weekly basis.
A miniature video production for a band in Toronto.
Rugby in New-Zealand 2003. Otago won! Yay!
Also, just for fun, I thought I would share a funny video from someone on vimeo (Keith Loutit). It’s also based on the Tilt-Shift technique, but all bundled into a video. Pretty awesome!
Princeton online lexical database of English, WordNet, defines a tragedy as a “drama in which the protagonist is overcome by some superior force or circumstance”. In my case, the protagonist was the poor little Pepper shaker that we bought on our trip to Thailand (that’s right Jason!) and the superior force was the espresso tamper that went flying out of my hands and chopped off both its arms at once… there goes 30 baht…
I now present you, The Pepper Tragedy in four acts:
A friend of mine introduced me to this photographer by showing me a photo and asking me when it was taken. Here is the photo:
It turns out that the photo was taken around 1915, by a Russian photographer/chemist named Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky (1863 to 1944). He was one of the first photographers to tackle the problem of taking colour photographs. Some of his techniques led to patents for producing colour film slides and for projecting colour motion pictures. Basically, his technique involved taking three monochrome pictures (red, green, and blue — RGB anybody?!) and mixing them together to get the original colours of the scene. Apparently, if you look carefully you can see that there is a “ghosting” effect because the subject might move slightly between the three different shots. Fascinating stuff!!
Links to check out:
Flickr Photostream of his best work – Someone else put that up there I guess! (Must visit! Very cool!)
(Must visit! Very cool!)
