Experimenting with Tilt-Shift Photography

One of my facebook contacts forwarded me a link to an interesting photoshop article that had me digging through my image archive for a suitable photo to experiment with. Photoshop is great…no matter how much I think that I know, there is always something new that can be done with the application.

This article discussed tilt-shift photography, which uses the Scheimpflug principal to obscure the focal plane of the image relative to the camera. It seems that a photoshop technique can be applied, with a little finesse, to gain an effect similar to that created with a Tilt-Shift Lens. The resulting image can actually trick the eye and look like a miniature model as opposed to a real scene. I used an image that I snapped of a town on the Tambopata River in Peru and applied the technique.

So…what do you think? Does Puerto Maldonado look real or more like a miniature scale model?


I’m already looking for some interesting vantage points to shoot Playa Del Rey, CA and experiment further with this technique. More to come soon…

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6 Responses to “Experimenting with Tilt-Shift Photography”


  1. 1 Alyson

    i think the only thing that gives it away are the little boats…but maybe i just notice them because you already pointed out they’re fake :-P

  2. 2 Hank

    LOL! I’ve seen this type of imagery before but this perticular shot does really look like a miniature scale model. Very interesting.

  3. 3 Mia

    I agree with alyson, the boats are the only thing i would ever question

  4. 4 Josh

    The boats look spot-on to me. The smoke is a bit of a give-away though. Tilt-shift is cool stuff.

  5. 5 Tara

    It does look fake! like a miniature version of a town.

  6. 6 Anna K

    Hi,
    how did you create this? Its amazing!

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