Tilt Shift Photography

About three or four months ago I was reading an article somewhere on the internet about this guy who was using this "new" type of lens for these hypersureal photographs. The one that I really liked the most was of the Santa Monica pier, a place I've managed to visist. The tecnique is called Tilt Shift and it involves a special type of lens that allows the photographer the ability to shift the depth perception of the image. Thus, as you can see on the left, the real image looks more like a minature than reality. I assure you, this is a very real picture of the actual Santa Monica pier.

It's actually the same image I remember and its taken me this long to locate the image. On the NYTimes website today I read and article about High Dynamic Range photography, which basically blends three different exposures into one image and creates a depth of color unimaginable with a single shot. This made me remember the picture of Santa Monica, and the technique that was used. The problem was, I couldn't remember the technique. After about two hours ot searching Wikipedia and other such sites I was having no luck. So I tried something different. I thought, if I look for someone who does High Dynamic Range photography, I bet they've messed with this other type of photography too. So, I pulled up Google and did my best.

Sure enough, after about thirty minutes of looking I found the site AutoMatt. Not only did he do High Dynamic Range, but he had also experimented with Tilt Shift. The picture to the right is the one I liked that he did the most. Its the town square somewhere in Paris. THe guy lives in San Fransico, and he's got a ton of pictures of San Fran, but I liked this one the best.

I don't know what it is about Tilt Phase. Maybe its te feeling that at any second Godzilla will come trampling over the picture I'm looking at. Maybe its that something that looks so fake can be so real. I don't know. Regardless, I'm happy that I found that picture of Santa Monica again because I'd been searching for it for so long.

-Steve

[EDIT] For those interested, I've managed to find the original article I remember reading. The artists who shot the Santa Monica pier is Olivo Barbieri. You can view the Santa Monica picture and several others at this link to the article about him in Metropolismag.com.