Tilt your vision

While watching the Disney World Christmas parade on TV this past year, this great little video showed during the credits had me very intrigued. It was a review of the whole parade shown sped up and the camera some how managed to make everything look like it was miniature. Was a camera really that far away? Or did they spend hours and hours constructing some miniature Disney World model? I couldn't figure out how such a feat was accomplished. Either way I thought the result was super cute and figured it was Disney magic at work. Until a few weeks later when I saw a car insurance commercial done in the same way. And again I was mesmerized and entertained by the "cute fact" of it all. So I decided to get to the bottom of what this phenomenon was. The answer: tilt-shift photography.

Tilt-shift photography is all about changing the angle of the camera to give it a different perspective. And to get an actual tilt-shift image not produced out of Photoshop, there is a special lens that actually tilts to create a shallow depth of field. Sounds complicated right? Well take a look at these pictures to get a better idea of what I'm talking about.

(images: Sir Hsu, mrjarvis.com, michelle yap, depus)

Umm pretty amazing right? I looks like you're looking at a model used for a movie set. Like any minute a little mouse will scamper through this and will make you realize these aren't real life sized people and things. You can see where part of the image looks out of focus. To give the impression that you are very far away.

Of course, now that I'm aware of how these images are created I am seeing them pop up everywhere! Just the other day I saw that 4th image show up on esty's home page and

If you want to see more check out these great pictures from Smashing Magazine online.

Or check out this adorable video of a day at Disney World. It's not the same one I mentioned from the Christmas parade, you can catch that here.