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50 Beautiful Examples Of Tilt-Shift Photography
November 16th, 2008 in Inspiration | 153 Comments
Tilt-shift photography is a creative and unique type of photography in which the camera is manipulated so that a life-sized location or subject looks like a miniature-scale model. Below we present 50 beautiful examples of tilt-shift photography. All examples are linked to their sources. We strongly encourage you to explore other works of the photographers we’ve featured in this post.
To add good miniature effect to your photographs, shoot subjects from a high angle (especially from the air). It creates the illusion of looking down at a miniature model. A camera equipped with a tilt-shift lens, which simulates a shallow depth of field, is essentially all you need to start.
You may also want to take a look at the following related posts:
- Beautiful Examples Of High-Speed Photography
- 35 Fantastic HDR Pictures
- 45 Beautiful Motion Blur Photos
50 Amazing Examples of Tilt-Shift Photography
Christopher Chan
Sydney Apple Store Miniature; Fake tilt shift effect applied to a 3xp HDR.
Vesuviano - Nicola De Pisapia
Model of a model of reality. Vietri sul mare (SA) Italy.
Tilt-Shift Photography: It’s A Small World After All
oseillo
On the photo: Barcelona, Spain.
Tilt-Shift Videos
Beached from Keith Loutit
Time-Lapse video of Tamarama Beach, Sydney.
Bathtub III from Keith Loutit
Time-Lapse video of Sydney Harbor with tilt-Shift.
Bathtub II from Keith Loutit
Time-Lapse video at Sydney with tilt-Shift.
From Julien Vignali
Time Lapse video with Tilt-Shift.
Harrowdown Hill from Beggars
From Mrjerz
Multnomah Falls in Miniature from Andrew Curtis
Time-Lapse video at Multnomah Falls.
Monde liliputien (illusion d’optique) Uploaded by kronsilds
You can find further videos in a Metafilter round-up of tiltshift videos.
How To Make Fake Miniature Tilt-Shift Photos?
To add good miniature effect to your photographs, shoot subjects from a high angle (especially from the air). It creates the illusion of looking down at a miniature model. A camera equipped with a tilt-shift lens, which simulates a shallow depth of field, is essentially all you need to start.
Resources:
- Do-It-Yourself Tutorial: Tilt-Shift Lens
Create a tilt-shift lens yourself if you can’t afford to buy one. - Focusing the Tilt-Shift Lens
- Using Tilt-Shift Lenses to Control Depth of Field
- Using Tilt-Shift Lenses to Control Perspective
- Why does tiltshift photography make things look tiny?
- Tilt/Shift Photography Links
And if you don’t have specialized equipment, you can make use of Adobe Photoshop or any other image-editing software. Manipulate the focus in such a way that it gives the image the effect of having been shot with a macro lens. Secondly, increase the saturation and contrast in a way that the color looks like bright paint on a miniature model.
Resources:р>
- Tilt-Shift Photography Photoshop Tutorial
This tutorial shows you how to make photos of real life-sized subjects look like photos of miniature models. - Tilt-Shift Photoshop Tutorial
- Photoshop Tilt-Shift
- Fake Model Photography
With a very little effort, you can take existing photographs of everyday scenes and make it look like they’re actually of miniature models.
Sources and Resources
Here you’ll find links to further articles and related Area for further articles and related resources:
- 10 Tiny Tokyo Photos
- Flickr Pool: Tilt-shift miniature fakes
Consists of tilt-shift photos created using Adobe Photoshop. - Flickr Pool: Tilt-Shift HDR
Related posts
Please also consider our previous posts:
- Beautiful Examples Of High-Speed Photography
- 35 Fantastic HDR Pictures
- 45 Beautiful Motion Blur Photos
About the author
Vailancio Rodrigues maintains a blog of his own, Technology Tips, which provides reviews, tips and tricks for various gadgets.
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Okibi (November 16th, 2008, 2:49 pm)
Wow interesting photo technique, intrigued now.
zero0x (November 16th, 2008, 2:51 pm)
second :):)
nice article
Mike (November 16th, 2008, 2:57 pm)
lol
My RSS reader picked up this story with the title: 50 Beautiful Examples of Tilt-Shit Photography
Patrick (November 16th, 2008, 2:58 pm)
There are certainly some fantastic photos in this article. Nice typo in the first h3 element, by the way.
SpacyRicochet (November 16th, 2008, 3:02 pm)
That’s because it says that in the secondary title.
But these photo’s are beautiful indeed.
James De Angelis (November 16th, 2008, 3:02 pm)
Might want to re-check the spelling on the H3 there, not sure it’s saying what you want it to :)
Nice post otherwise!
JN (November 16th, 2008, 3:16 pm)
This is a funny technique, but I feel SM is beginning to focus more on quantity and less on quality with all the “X examples of Y”-articles which just lists a ton of photos/videos/links.
I wouldn’t want to see SM disappear in the endless list of blogs that do this already, so my friendly suggestion is to focus on the more exclusive material that you have here, which made me a regular reader in the first place.
Vitaly Friedman & Sven Lennartz (November 16th, 2008, 3:42 pm)
@JN: thanks for your input. You see, we try to cover various topics and every week we try to offer the best mix for everybody. We’ll keep your suggestion in mind, but sometimes it’s just hard to be really good for everybody.
Jordan Moore (November 16th, 2008, 3:49 pm)
I’d like to say that I really appreciate the effort that goes into articles like these, I had no idea that such things like Tilt Shift photography existed!
Quakeulf (November 16th, 2008, 3:58 pm)
The ones with the trains and cars in them were particulary awesome, probably because I’ve been doing my fair share of model railroading as a child. :3
Phobios (November 16th, 2008, 4:11 pm)
Same for me as Jordan Moore.
I was unaware of such a interesting way of photography! Thanks!
Bimal (November 16th, 2008, 4:13 pm)
You continue to bring us great articles.. Smashing Magazine comes up trumps again! I worked out how to do this in photoshop a couple of years ago after seeing the technique in practice on flickr. Love the technique.
WilhelmR (November 16th, 2008, 5:15 pm)
Expanding a bit on what JN said, I think the articles are fine, i just wish you expanded the opinions in each to make the the articles even more interesting and probably the comments a bit juicer, if that makes any sense :P
Matthew (November 16th, 2008, 5:17 pm)
in response to Vitaly Friedman & Sven Lennartz (November 16th, 2008, 3:42 pm) -
Its great you do so many different things, and I do really like this kind of photography,
However, I am left feeling like you simply got every single tilt-shift image you could possible find on the internet to make it up to 50.
I feel it would have been a far better article if all the images were of such a good standard as the better ones, even if there were only 20 or 30 of them.
Klaas van Wachteren (November 16th, 2008, 6:11 pm)
Interesting. And amazing.
Chris Broadfoot (November 16th, 2008, 7:59 pm)
I think this article is a real shame — fake miniatures is not the only application of tilt-shift photography, and is really quite gimmicky.
Mike (November 16th, 2008, 9:01 pm)
I havent seen photos like these since the beata 1983 collection.
Darth Brooks (November 16th, 2008, 9:21 pm)
3/4 of these are awesome. I have a few that could beat out your bottom percentile.
Josh (November 16th, 2008, 9:49 pm)
The definition of tilt-shift photography is incredibly inaccurate.
Tilt-shifting is a reference to the fact that the focal plane is tilted (top to bottom) or shifted (left to right) so that the plane is no longer parallel to the camera. An after affect of which can be the surrealistic mini described.
Colin (November 16th, 2008, 10:18 pm)
Josh (above) beat me to the punch. These photos are simply using a tilt-shift lens (or photoshop to fake the effect). You will find that tilt-shift lenses are used in many disciplines of photography including skateboarding, rock climbing and fashion.
more: Link [en.wikipedia.org]
horuzzz (November 16th, 2008, 10:25 pm)
This was been posted on digg repeatedly for the last year. What are you doing? clearing the comments and reposting a couple months later? this is getting really old. The last two times this article showed up on digg there were dozens of comments about fake fake images, ie: some of the supposed miniatures are in fact real photos of real places. I dont know about this, to be honest Im just reporting what others said the last time.
The only real gripe I have is that whoever wrote this article continues to post it in digg every few months. Im very curious about this activity on digg. There are many blogs that continue to COPY ARTICLE, DELETE OLD ARTICLE, PASTE ARTICLE so that the comments are deleted, the timestamp is recent and people think its “new and fresh.” From what Ive seen, anything you see on digg at any given time that isnt a current event article, has a 50/50 shot of being a repost of something from last year or even older!
Andris (November 16th, 2008, 11:11 pm)
This is an awesome technique I’ve never seen before. Pretty inspiring. Thanx.
linh (November 16th, 2008, 11:12 pm)
stuff in those image look like a toys
Hotdesign (November 17th, 2008, 12:09 am)
wow .. i like it .. please give us more of this set ..
thanks
Dan (November 17th, 2008, 12:21 am)
Wow interesting photo technique, intrigued now.
Dan
Link [apps.jooopa.net]
Karl (November 17th, 2008, 1:21 am)
@horuzzz: You’re a real smartass… This IS about real photos that look like miniatures… Geez…
Nik (November 17th, 2008, 1:29 am)
Some really nice photographys!
Link [www.vimeo.com] on Link [www.vimeo.com]
Ant (November 17th, 2008, 1:42 am)
Like others I was unaware of this technique, and am very pleased to have it brought to my attention. In places it is stunningly effective, but quite often the blurring that takes place in the refocusing element of the technique can distract to the extent that it takes away from the picture. While a couple do not achieve the required effect at all and just look like a picture with lots of blurry bits.
shaun (November 17th, 2008, 1:43 am)
great post
Maurits (November 17th, 2008, 1:55 am)
Nice post!!!!!!! Great!
JAB (November 17th, 2008, 2:07 am)
While many of the above are interesting uses of the miniature effect of an extreme upward tilt, I don’t like using “Tilt-Shift” as the title of this group. The primary use of view camera movements is to create perspective corrected images with deep focus, near and far.
Kedume (November 17th, 2008, 2:18 am)
Nice article. This is a very curious effect.
Erik R. (November 17th, 2008, 2:26 am)
I love tilt-shifting. My favorite is Link [www.flickr.com].
tct (November 17th, 2008, 2:52 am)
Some very nice examples. Some though, don’t work that well.
James (November 17th, 2008, 3:11 am)
Sadly this article really is just a bit of digg-bait. Some of the examples are very well done but there are several photos that really just aren’t good examples.
I agree with a couple of the posters above about quantity over quality. The last article I read here was informative and well written about tidying up your coding practice. That was good. While I understand the need to cater to a large audience, SM should really try to make less of these digg type lists if they want the blog to stand out from the crowd.
Mike Redfern (FoxyMcSlick) (November 17th, 2008, 3:14 am)
Wow, one of my photos selected in the list! Thanks for the vote of confidence guys, it’s great to have your work recognised.
Link [www.flickr.com]
Mike Redfern (FoxyMcSlick)
mezu (November 17th, 2008, 3:26 am)
Wow..*picks jaw from desk :)
Julius (November 17th, 2008, 3:32 am)
WOW… incredible great job!
Mr Smith (November 17th, 2008, 3:59 am)
It seems a tilt shift lens is not “essentially all you need to start.”.
I’m sorry but most of these TS’s are badly faked or just poor quality, there are some great examples of TS in there but they are spoilt. Again as stated quality over quantity guys.
Name to shame (not towards the artists but to editorial needing to fill the quota) :
Nicola De Pisapia
Lachlan Sear
B Tal
Eric Lafforgue
Timmy Toucan
Therealjasonruff
darktiger
patrix - *horrible
tHE PypEr
Wmandra
Angusleonard
Jeangenie
Tarkka
Shawn S. Ide
Vladimir.d
Toshio
Unknown
….not all the fakes but the others are good enough to pass.
blaadje (November 17th, 2008, 5:47 am)
Some other examples:
Link [www.flickr.com]
Link [www.flickr.com]
Link [www.flickr.com]
Link [www.flickr.com]
Andreas Overland (November 17th, 2008, 5:57 am)
Few of these, if any, show signs of shift, and most of them are photoshop-tilts. “A few selective blur in PhotoShop photographs” would be even more accurate title.
There are loads of very beautiful and artistic tilt/shift photographs around. Should be enough to make a wonderful 50-photographs post.
A few examples:
Link [www.flickr.com]
Link [slicesoftime.andreasoverland.no]
Barend (November 17th, 2008, 6:14 am)
Very nice! I’m always wondering how much photomanipulation is used with this type of photography.
Torley (November 17th, 2008, 6:24 am)
I enjoy seeing tilt-shift (or “tiltshifta” as I sometimes call it) quasi-applied to digital environments too, like the virtual world of Second Life. Here’s something I did awhile back: Link [www.flickr.com]
Johan (November 17th, 2008, 6:47 am)
youtube tutorial:
Link [www.youtube.com]
stewe (November 17th, 2008, 7:04 am)
generally when the band of focus is relatively small both in terms of narrowness and scope, the effect is fake, and there are indeed a number of photos in there where the t/s is created in ps. Focus can and tends to be a little more sporadic on the actual “film/digital” plane when using the lenses. And combining both tilt and shift is a bit gimmicky and has some specific uses, but it’s too bad you left out explanations and examples of why these lenses and technique (tilt and shift separately) is used beyond creating miniature worlds.
Payam (November 17th, 2008, 7:23 am)
Wow, it is a great collection. Thank you.
Kevin (November 17th, 2008, 7:42 am)
As a couple people already pointed out, this article’s description of tilt-shift is misguided. Tilt shift photography is most commonly used in commercial and achitectural photography to correct perspective and bring the focal plane in line with the subject. It is really interesting, however, to see it used in this manner!
MattT (November 17th, 2008, 7:43 am)
Most of these are pretty good, but you can tell the fakes done by the folks who don’t get how this works. Faking it is more than just blurring everything but a narrow band, because that can result in fakes that don’t work. The top-down view of the Apple Store, for example, doesn’t work because it’s just a clear middle with blurred surrounding. There’s a bridge one that doesn’t work either, because part of the top of the bridge is blurred even though it’s the same distance from the clear part below, and closer than the far shore of the river, part of which is clear.
Everything that’s the same distance from the camera should be clear for the effect to work, I think.
SE7EN (November 17th, 2008, 8:27 am)
wow! before I read the description what tilt-shift photo is, I thought these pics are the shot of miniature model!
gene (November 17th, 2008, 8:55 am)
Total misconception of TS lenses. Tilt lens can make these effects, but most of these in here were made with photoshop masking. Come on, there are really nice image out there using TS lenses, not these…
Austin (November 17th, 2008, 9:19 am)
more like “5 beautiful examples of tilt-shift photography and 45 beautiful examples of Photoshop” - hahaha. very resourceful post! Thank you!
Timothy (November 17th, 2008, 12:51 pm)
I love this stuff
warzauwynn (November 17th, 2008, 12:51 pm)
This article is shameful if only because it specifies “Tilt Shift Photography” in the title, not “Tilt Shift Photoshop and Photography”. The worst part of is that any TS photographer can usually spot a fake a split second after looking at the image.
If it’s not photography just say so, there’s nothing wrong with doing it in photoshop if that’s your game. Just don’t tell unwitting readers that it’s something it’s not.
Kent (November 17th, 2008, 1:11 pm)
Mr. Laforet is an amazing photographer. ’nuff said. =)
honion (November 17th, 2008, 1:18 pm)
Another example Link [www.desolatemetropolis.com]
adina hutanu (November 17th, 2008, 2:55 pm)
i tried some myself :) check my “miniatures” here: Link [adinahutanu.wordpress.com]
adina hutanu (November 17th, 2008, 2:56 pm)
I played using photoshop, because I don’t own a special tilt-shift lense :)
Bania (November 17th, 2008, 4:17 pm)
Somebody needs to get some shots like this at Legoland!
Jeff (November 17th, 2008, 5:13 pm)
There are some tilt-shift photographs on CruiseJournals.com as well, in the Photography forum. Here’s a link:
Link [cruisejournals.com]
rizzy (November 17th, 2008, 6:14 pm)
aweso0me,
reblogged at SpotOnce.com
黯然销魂剑 (November 17th, 2008, 7:01 pm)
WOW~ Very nice!
Brian Talbot (B Tal) (November 17th, 2008, 7:30 pm)
Great collection! This is really some fun inspiration.
I noticed that you used Link [www.flickr.com] but gave credit to someone who had re-used my work without asking permission first. Would you folks kindly mind linking back to the appropriate original source? I hate to be a stickler, but would really appreciate setting things straight.
Thanks for including me in this list - its a real honor. If anyone has any questions or would like to know more about the Fenway or Beach shots, please just give a holler.
Lindsey (November 17th, 2008, 9:08 pm)
Wow.. these are nuts!
Link [www.link-creative.com]
jc (November 17th, 2008, 9:30 pm)
Just noticed that your Fenway park image is wrongly attributed to Timmy Toucan, when it should be pointing to Brian Talbot: Link [www.flickr.com]
Thought you might want to know.
jc (November 17th, 2008, 9:33 pm)
sigh… my apologies to Timmy Toucan, I wanted to say that the image attributed to “It’s A Small World After All” wasn’t correct. please do excuse my bumbles.
thanks.
Pete Morley (November 18th, 2008, 1:13 am)
“The last two times this article showed up on digg there were dozens of comments about fake fake images, ie: some of the supposed miniatures are in fact real photos of real places. I dont know about this, to be honest Im just reporting what others said the last time.”
Oh wow. Smashing manages to attract some pretty ignorant comments but this is one of the best I’ve read.
Ignatz Horowitz (November 18th, 2008, 7:23 am)
I don’t know which is worse…this, or the “fantastic HDR” post.
Dele (November 18th, 2008, 12:46 pm)
i dont care whether or not the concept is misinterpreted. I love the work that went into the pieces!! Stunning :) Keep up the good work guys
fernando (November 19th, 2008, 6:18 am)
very cool pictures and videos!
fanta (November 19th, 2008, 6:23 am)
“The last two times this article showed up on digg there were dozens of comments about fake fake images, ie: some of the supposed miniatures are in fact real photos of real places (..)”
- hahaha, will leave it without even commenting…
But anyway, I don’t like the dummy blur made in photoshop
Nag (November 20th, 2008, 2:14 am)
Very nice photos, excellent photo technique and nice videos….. I like it
Wayfaring Wanderer (November 20th, 2008, 7:06 am)
They have that lensbaby look to them……very cool.
WW
Link [www.wayfaringwanderer.com]
1farahani (November 20th, 2008, 7:06 am)
IN THE NAME OGF GOD
GOOD…
lookouts (November 20th, 2008, 10:26 am)
I like the tilt-shift models, it very good and goes good with home country. Nice!
web (November 20th, 2008, 1:59 pm)
So cool! I wish I knew how to do that!
Mike (November 21st, 2008, 6:31 pm)
Some pretty amazing images, something new to try!
BLOGS (November 21st, 2008, 9:31 pm)
MOST OF ITS PLASTIC
Don Tonio (November 22nd, 2008, 2:54 am)
Just amazing sources.
I did a post explaining what is tilt-shift and how this old technique became famous on digital photography.
Link [www.quevoisje.fr]
It’s in french, but you can googletranslate it…
Gokhan (November 23rd, 2008, 8:00 am)
Link [dogangokhan.wordpress.com]
have examples from Turkey
MonsieurLâm (November 23rd, 2008, 10:47 am)
Here’s one of mine :
Link [www.flickr.com]
Link [www.flickr.com]
Link [www.flickr.com]
Enjoy
Cori (November 26th, 2008, 11:06 am)
Wow…i didn’t know people were so touchy about photography..I wonder, why I am even here, but then I just remembered that a lot of these pictures look exactly like toy models and this effect might not be a camera, but a program–say photoshop?
Please visit my website: Link [www.lost--wishes.piczo.com]
lucky (November 26th, 2008, 2:52 pm)
I like it ))
flik (November 29th, 2008, 12:33 pm)
wow… it’s awesome
brentklockars (November 30th, 2008, 8:34 pm)
thanks
Puji Raharjo (December 4th, 2008, 9:02 am)
Funtastic
Puji Raharjo (December 4th, 2008, 9:04 am)
Funtastic
check this : Link [fototrick.blogspot.com]
Wil Fernandez (December 7th, 2008, 9:23 am)
Thanks for sharing - some of these are outstanding!
I’ve been toying around with tilt shift photography myself.
Here are some “before and after” tilt shift shots of the Pepperdine University campus:
Link [www.wilfernandez.com]
fletcher d (December 12th, 2008, 7:47 am)
o m g….
thesse pics are like sooo totally amazing!!!!!
Lee Mann (December 12th, 2008, 3:49 pm)
Why?
Michael Krause (December 16th, 2008, 4:48 am)
I like this technique so much that I wrote an application for the iPhone and iPod Touch with which you can interactively create your tilt-shift photo. Link [itunes.apple.com].
Cameron Davidson (December 21st, 2008, 4:31 pm)
All that is old is new again.
Tilt shift has been a round for quite a while
Olivo Barbieri is an Italian photographer who has been shooting tilt/shift aerials for a long-time. Mark Tucker is a master at it, but has shifted (no pun intended) his focus. Claude Vasquez was shooting 4×5 Tilt/Shift portraits in the late eighties.
Nie technique fo rthe tight subject, but it is starting or has looked gimmicky for quite a while.
Personally, I would not be caught dead having a tilt/shift image in my book.
Cameron Davidson (December 21st, 2008, 4:31 pm)
All that is old is new again.
Tilt shift has been a round for quite a while
Olivo Barbieri is an Italian photographer who has been shooting tilt/shift aerials for a long-time. Mark Tucker is a master at it, but has shifted (no pun intended) his focus. Claude Vasquez was shooting 4×5 Tilt/Shift portraits in the late eighties.
Nice technique for the right subject, but it is starting or has looked gimmicky for quite a while.
Personally, I would not be caught dead having a tilt/shift image in my book.
Desire Dupas (December 22nd, 2008, 4:26 pm)
Hi !
Thanks a lot for this post.
I’ve wrote an article regarding this amazing technique.
I also tried to do it myself and It works pretty good ;-)
Link [www.electronic-illusions.be]
Thanks a lot again.
Regards from Belgium