Shoot Seven - Work Diary

For my seventh shoot, I wanted to try the technique of tilt shift. The technique is usually accomplished through a tilt shift lens, though this costs a great deal of money. As a result, I researched and found out that I would be able to replicate the effect in Photoshop. I decided to go out with a tripod and get to a high point where I could take pictures of people to make them appear as miniatures, which is the effect created by tilt shift photos.



Here is one of my straight images for the shoot. To create the miniatures style tilt shift seen, I used photoshop's tilt shift filter. I went into filter-blur gallery-tilt shift, where it adds tilt shift guidelines. I dragged the guidelines so that the blur begins just out of range of where the people are framed. I set the gradient of blur to be quite short so that the blur is fairly harsh surrounding the people. The blur around the people is what creates the miniature effect; which is an effect I added to by greatly increasing the saturation of the colours of the image, as well as slightly increasing the contrast of the image. These together create a strong impression of the image appearing to be a miniature model set.

This was taken from the top of a multi-storey car park. I shot this image on f/8 as I wanted it to have a wide depth of field, as I felt a narrow one would have affected the tilt shift effect I intended to use later. I kept the shutter speed at 1/80 as wanted to avoid camera shake and any excessive motion blur that would ruin the illusion of miniatures that the photo creates. The presentation of people as miniatures could suggest that people who live in urban environments are metaphorically small compared to the architecture around them and the large presence of advertising and commercialism. The final edited image displays some very saturated shades of green, which represent nature. This creates a contrast to the grey shades throughout the rest of the image, and acts as a reminder that the urban environment was developed over what was once an untouched natural environment. The saturated colours are contrasted by some dark tones towards the left side of the image. They create some tonal contrast with the lighter tones shown to the right of the image, where the sun shines.



Here is another image that I also took from the top of a car park, only this focuses more on the main part of the town. I shot look down upon the bus shelter, where there were a large amount of people, which I felt would make for a good miniature model effect. I shot this on f/8 and 1/200 in order to achieve a wide depth of field and avoid motion blur or camera shake. This image has highly saturated colours, in shades of red, yellow and blue, which create connotations of happiness and urban bliss. This is contrasted by the architecture shown in the background, which is very brutalist and creates a sense of power over the viewer. The background also displays mainly shades of grey, which could represent the dull parts of the urban lifestyle such as having a daily routine job; this creates a contrast of moods between the mid ground and the background. In the centre of the foreground of the image is a man walking in the bus lane; he appears to be wearing a formal suit and be walking at a pace. From this, we can guess that he has an office job of some description. He makes a clear punctum of the image, as he is clearly walking where he isn't supposed to be. You could suggests that he is not following rules as his job is dull and revolves around rules and doing things 'by the book', therefore he is rebelling in a minor to create some excitement in his work day.