MINIATURE MARVEL
PROJECT 2
Dan Mold shows you how to turn cityscapes in to fantastic toy towns both in-camera and by using Photoshop CC
PRO TIP
Camera-shake can be more prone to creeping in when taking photos with a telephoto lens. It’s therefore worth using Image Stabilization, or setting up on a tripod if possible. Aim for a shutter speed that is at least the reciprocal of your focal length, such as 1/200 sec when shooting at 200mm, and so on.
While we call this miniaturization look a ‘tilt-shift’ effect, it’s actually only the tilting part of an expensive, specialist tilt-shift lens that will have the ability to shift the zone of focus in this artful way.
Tilt-shift lenses are specialist optics, out of reach for most photographers (myself included). But for architectural and city photographers they’re the holy grail, allowing users to move the lens along its axis, either left/right and the pitch, or up/down and the yaw, depending on which way the lens is set up, while still attached to its Canon body. Needless to say, this fancy functionality comes with a high price tag.
Fortunately the ‘tilt’ aspect, responsible for creating these toy-town effects, can be easily replicated in-camera, using Scene modes of some entry-level Canons, as well as in Photoshop. Shooting your start image with a telephoto lens provides the best results, as not only will you have a totally sharp shot to begin with to add blur in Photoshop; unlike with the in-camera filters, or even a tilt-shift effect, you’ll be able to refine the blur after you’ve clicked the shutter button.
In this project we take a look at how you can achieve tilt-shift shots in-camera, as well as how to transform ordinary pictures into toy-town scenes. You can set the exact amount of blur, fine-tune where the sharp band of focus sits on your image, and also boost the colours to really ramp up the playful miniaturized look, with the end result looking like a fabulous tiny toy town.
It helps to shoot from up high, whether that’s from the stands at a football game, a cityscape from the top of a skyscraper or bridge, or a landscape from the top of a hill. This is so you can replicate the view we associate with those toy town scenes, like old children’s TV shows, so things will look miniature once blur is added.
You’ll also want a clear focal point that you can firmly fix your band of sharpness on, such as a person, vehicle, building, or the two cyclists in our example. Without further ado, let’s get to it and cre
