About a year and a half ago I first read about the tilt-shift style of photography [1]. Tilt-shift is the name of the effect which you can apply through the use of a crazy-expensive lens, or by using Photoshop. I originally tried my hand at this last summer [2] to mixed results. It was good fun though so I decided to give it another go. The basic idea is that the tilt-shift creates an illusion that makes the subject of your photo look like it's a miniature or toy model. So if you have a three-quarters-overhead view of a city scene and apply this effect it'll end up looking like you've taken a picture of a model train town. Some situations lend themselves to tilt-shifting better than others. Below are some of the pictures I've tilt-shifted.
Martinstor in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany
IHOP on the Las Vegas Strip
The Ruins of Henneburg near Dorfprozelten, Germany
Downtown Cleveland, Ohio
The Zeil in Frankfurt am Main
Sparkasse and Duetsche Bank headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany
Central Reykjavik, Iceland
Those are great. I love photography and wish I had a better eye for it. The one in Iceland is fantastic.
Thanks, they were a lot of fun to make.
What if you took tilt-shift photos of a miniature town?
there's a 35 lens for about $300 that you can use for this purpose, although i think the optics are weak and it's meant more for a 1st person on intoxicants kind of look.
i played with it for a few minutes with the red so i know it must have a pretty common mount. it hardly looks like a 35 lens, more like a circular accordian tube with a smaller piece of glass at the end.
i thought it was called worm lens but a search didn't yield much. maybe i should have cuilled it.