Ever wondered how some photographers take photos that make their subjects look like miniature models? Tiny cars with diddy people standing next to them?
Well, it’s easy, and you too can make your Mercedes like a Matchbox, your Dacia like a Dinky, or your Chrysler like a Corgi.
The miniature effect – often referred to as ‘tilt-shift photography’ – is all down to something called depth of field. In photographic terms, this is the distance between the nearest and farthest objects in an image, which appear in focus or out of focus according to where they are.
For example, if you were to take a shot of a toy car parked on a model street, you’d probably find that your foreground and background would be out of focus, and only the car itself and maybe the model people next to it would be sharp.
Making a real car with real people look like a model is therefore simply a matter of blurring the foreground and background, and hey presto, you’ve created a miniature model!
There are number of ways you can achieve this tilt-shift model effect. If you’re a truly enthusiastic photographer you can buy a special lens, though that could be expensive. On the other hand, some cameras now have a lens-blur or tilt-shift programme option built into them, so you can simply take the image and Bob’s your uncle: job done.
Another (and likely the cheapest) way to put the Mini into miniature is to access online software such as tilt-shiftmaker that enables you to blur your image at your computer or on your tablet. Instagram incorporates a tilt-shift feature too, making it easy to creatively work on your photo, and if you have a photo-editing programme such as Photoshop you can manually blur any areas of your image until you’re happy with the effect. Or, browse the ’net and you’ll find all manner of photo-editing apps, many of which include tilt-shift or lens-blur as standard.
So the software is already there just waiting for your creativity. But it will help greatly if the image you’re going to work with is ‘fit for purpose,’ meaning that for best effect you need to have enough detail in the foreground and background so that when you do the blurring, your main subjects – your car and anyone standing next to it – will look truly diddy.
It also helps to have a bit of elevation; try and get some height when taking your photo so that you’re slightly looking down on your car – just as you would if you were photographing a real model car or a street in a model village.
The image on the right was taken from our office window, with Snapseed’s lens-blur employed to create the effect. Total time: approx. five minutes.
For more information read this article from Popular Mechanics.
Now show us yours!
Now that we’ve inspired you to turn your own car into a scale model, we’d love to see what you’ve done. Create your dinky car image and send it to us via our Facebook page and we’ll pin the best submissions to the top of the page!