I've been talking about photography a lot at work lately. Our new IT guy shoots photography in his spare time and my boss has a business selling art photography and t-shirts (more on that later). One of my conversations today about photography turned interesting. While I was waiting for my computer to have some software installed this afternoon, I was talking with Jeff, our new desktop guy and he happened to mention making miniatures. The conversation went a little something like this.
Him: It's like creating miniatures in photo.
Me: You mean tilt-shift?
Him: Exactly, how do you know about tilt-shift?
Me: Are you kidding, I'm fascinated by that type of photography. What types of things have you done?
Him: I've taken a couple downtown shots. I just have fun with it.
Me: You'll have to bring them in to show me. I would love to see them. It's something I've always wanted to learn.
Him: It's actually really easy. I can show you how to create them.
At this point I'm salivating. Not only does he do tilt-shift work but he'd be willing to show me how to do it. Of the long list of things that I would like to learn, this is right there at the top. Of course now that means I'll have to actually take some real photos. And pick up photoshop.
If you've forgotten, tilt-shift photography is taking photographs, blurring the edges and creating miniature scenes from real landscapes. It is taking what are often sweeping aerial views and making them look like models. I've posted some Olivo Barbieri images before but here are some other tilt shift images to get your imagination going.
I'll check with Jeff to see if I can post some of his images.
Don't be confused though. The image above is an aerial photograph of the actual Paris hotel in Las Vegas. Barbieri uses a technique called Tilt-Shift to create the illusion of smallness. He blurs the edges of the photographs to give the image a sense of the unreal. We look at the images and see scale models when they were actually taken of real-life objects.
Olivo has normally worked from city to city creating a site-specific series of images. His photos from Las Vegas were the first that I'd seen and they were so unreal that for a while I simply could not believe that he hadn't built a scale model and photographed it. I include images from Vegas, Rome (The Coliseum), and New York. I'm so in awe of this man's work. The ability to create unreal images from real landmarks is so incredible to me that it seems like magic rather than incredibly technical photography. I understand that Olivo has done some videos using the same technique. I'll see about find them and posting them. In the meantime, enjoy more of Olivo's work at a good article by 
