Tilt-Shift photography.

Check out some of my HO scale models!







ok..if its not obvious, those are not actually models..
they are real railroad scenes!
(my technique isnt THAT good..I probably didnt pull off the illusion very well..but those are my first attempts!

I just came across this interesting "tilt-shift" process..
Normally we strive to make photos of our model trains look like real trains..
we dont often see photos of real trains made to look like models!

Check out these amazing tilt-shift videos:

http://vimeo.com/5137183

http://vimeo.com/keithloutit/videos/sort:date


Scot

I was thinking to myself "DAMN! Those are the best weathering and detailing jobs I've ever seen!"

Are those Code 70 rails? They look very prototypical!

MEC407 wrote:I was thinking to myself "DAMN! Those are the best weathering and detailing jobs I've ever seen!"

Same here. It's hard to understand how this technique can make real-life scenes, even the in-focus parts, seem so toy-like. Is there some process happening in the focal points of the pictures that sharpens them up or otherwise gives the "HO-scale" illusion? The blurriness I sort of get. The rest is a mystery to me.

Indeed, it would be great to know more about how Mr. Lawrence created these shots. I've heard of tilt-shift camera lenses; is that what was used to create these shots? And if so, what sorts of techniques were involved?

thanks! glad you enjoyed the pics..

I suppose technically my 3 photos above are not actually "Tilt-shift" photos..
they are instead *simulated* tilt-shift photos..using photoshop.

Genuine tilt-shift images (like the videos I linked in the first post) use special lenses to achieve the illusion..
basically radically lowering depth of field in 1:1 scale scenes..

for my photos, I simply used the photoshop gaussian blur filter to increase the blur from the center outward..
I also then increased the color saturation and the contrast to try to give a more "model train" type look..
trying to make the colors look more "plastic", more artificial..

here are the originals compared to the modified pics:














More reading on tilt-shift:

http://www.tiltshiftphotography.net/

http://www.tiltshiftphotography.net/examples.php

Scot

Very cool!

There is a site/app that can do this automatically with very simular results. I'll have to do some digging to find it.

EMTRailfan wrote:There is a site/app that can do this automatically with very simular results. I'll have to do some digging to find it.

Found it:
http://tiltshiftmaker.com/

Thanks for posting that link - this is a rather cool effect.

Here's my best effort: