in Photography

How to Create a Tilt Shift Photo

The technique of making real life objects look rather small in a photo is called tilt shift photography. The final product of this type of photography is known as tilted or a shifted effect when applied to the photograph. The photograph reflects the image of the focused object as if the shot was taken from a very far distance. Tilt shift photography helps you produce extremely interesting photographs. Photos produced by this type of photography are really interesting because if you show the photo to a friend, they will surely ask how you managed to get such a quality photo taken.

Tilt shift photography has everything to do with the skill of tilting or raising the lens of the camera in relation to the back part of the camera where the image is going to be focused. Tilting or raising the lens of a camera produces an effect to the photo taken from a distant location seemingly further from where it was actually taken. There are three ways to make a tilt shift photo, they are as follows:

– By using a tilt shift camera lens;
– By doing it manually using a normal lens;
– By using photo-editing software.

The same perspectives are applied when you take a tilt shift photo by using a tilt shift camera and doing it manually with a normal lens. By tilting the lens of the camera, you are pointing it in a different angle from the regular straight head on approach. By shifting the lens of the camera, you have the luxury of moving it upwards or downwards to attain the desired effect.

Tilt Shift Photo Using a Tilt Shift Camera Lens 

This type of lens can be really costly to you, but this is the easiest way to produce a tilt shift photo. Using this type of lens, you can easily manoeuvre your lens with a tilt or move it upwards and downwards. Once that’s done the rest is basically done for you. All you have to do is focus the lens on the desired object or location, have good lighting, and shoot from the desired location.

Tilt Shift Photo Using a Manual Technique with your Normal Lens

This is probably the hardest way of producing a tilt shift photo. The first thing to do is to remove the lens from the body, have a good grip on the lens, and manually tilt and shift the lens while focusing using one of your hands. A careful and delicate handling of the lens would eventually lead you to a much better miniature look on the focused object.

Tilt Shift Photo Using Photo Editing Software

You can turn a normally taken photo or image to a tilt shift effect using photo editing software. You can do this by simply loading a photo to any photo-editing software application, edit the photo by using the tilt shift effect, choose the focal point and the depth of the field,  increase the photo saturation and then finally save the photo taken and your done. The concept is the same for any photo-editing software.

Bogdan

Bogdan is the founder of Top Design Magazine. You can find him in Bucharest-Romania so next time you want to drink a beer there and talk about web and stuff, give him a message.