Jaz Design

Since my Big Ben “pseudo tilt-shift” got featured in Abduzeedo’s Daily Inspiration the other day I thought I’d talk a little more about “tilt-shift” and what I’ve learnt in the last couple of weeks.

What is Tilt-Shift Photography?

Really and truly the popular thing at the moment is actually “miniature faking” via digital post-processing – I don’t think there’s many people out there with the lens required to acheive this effect out of camera.

Wiki Says:

Miniature faking is a process in which a photograph of a life-size location or object is made to look like a photograph of a miniature scale model. Blurring parts of the photo simulates the shallow depth of field normally encountered in close-up photography, making the scene seem much smaller than it actually is.

Show Me Some Examples

Did I tell you, I simply love this effect? So do a lot of other people at the moment! For more examples of beautiful tilt-shift photography, check out these links!

• 41 Amazing Tilt-shift Miniature Faking Photographs
• 50 Beautiful Examples of Tilt-Shift Photography on Smashing Magazine
• Tilt-shift Miniature Fakes flickr group
• Tilt-shift Britain flickr group
• Tilt-shift flickr group
• More of my London Eye tilt-shifts

How can I Make a Miniature Fake?

Firstly, it’s good to think about your angle when taking the picture – above is better. It implies that what’s below you is smaller than you, and is how you’d look at a “toy town”. I had the advantage of being on the London Eye, so up nice and high. You can get the effect from any angle, but above just seems to emphasise it all the more.

Taking it into Photoshop

To boil it down as simply as possible, select an area with a gradient in quick mask mode, use lens blur on the selected area and then boost the saturation. For a detailed tutorial, this is the one I used to get started.

Boosting the saturation is important, because it gives it that lovely vibrant “toy” effect that we’re looking for. I usually tweak the curves and other things, whatever looks good

There are also websites out there which will do this for you, though I prefer greater control.

So, show me your tilt-shift miniature fakes!

I’ve had a very musical week. An amazing week.

Last Sunday we headed over to Reading Festival to watch the one and only Radiohead perform. I had no idea what to expect, and was blown away. The other bands were good too, but I’d be lying if I said I’d gone to see them. I was there purely for Radiohead, and some festival fun.

I have to say, hearing that many people sing along to Karma Police, it sends chills down your spine – it really does. I’ve never quite got over that part of the gig experience, people singing along – all those people on the same page. There’s nothing like it.

It was great to just chill out to their interesting and extraordinary music. We had a wonderful time. You can catch the highlights on the BBC website here.

Then we had Muse. Muse and their homecoming gigs in Teignmouth, Devon. (163 miles away…) Somehow, somehow we ended up with tickets for both the gigs. Friday we headed down, checked into our hotel, headed back out to the first gig. Exhausted though I was from the epic driving, it was fantastic. The Den is a small venue, so no matter where you were the view was good.

Saturday, just as awesome. We spent the day exploring Teignmouth town , down on the beach, and eating cream teas… and donut men.

Probably my favourite song from the gigs was Cave. It wasn’t just Cave. It was a “jazz rendition”. The piano was spectacular.  The whole thing was spectacular. See the vid here!

My other favourite is the song which I guess has replaced Butterflies (similar in their epicness) on their live setlist, United States of Eurasia. I’d have been a bit upset if we’d only gone on the Saturday when Matt messed up the Chopin at the end and didn’t finish it

Favourite new song? Easy. Undisclosed Desires.

See my flickr for more pics!

I love inspirational images. Love. I read a lot of blogs and galleries every morning (slowly being documented here!) and figured I needed a place to put all of my favourite images that I find. If you’re interested in a bit of daily inspiration, but not an overwhelming amount, check out my tumblr! I am using a default theme, time is short right now.

I’ve also added a tumblr widget on the right here, and a flickr one (when I redevelop my site I’ll find a better one!)

ETA: I’ve actually stopped using tumblr. The servers are constantly down, and it’s a lot of effort to add things to it. I’ve started using vi.sualize.us because it offers a similar functionality to Delicious, but for saving and sharing images! View my visualized here!

As for the tumblr widget, I’m using it to display my flickr photos for now because I couldn’t find a flickr widget I liked

On Saturday the 1st August some friends and I went along to the James May Lego House build at Denbies Wine Estate in Dorking. I mean, how could we not go? James May is attempting to build a life sized house out of Lego for his Toy Stories series. How many people have wanted to do that? I know I have.

After queueing for three and a half hours, we unfortunately did not get to play with any Lego. We were dedicated to our cause though, despite being told many times we were in the “danger zone” and felt that the organisers did their best – 2000+ people showed up for the 600 places.

You can see a selection of my photos from the day here. There’s some cute pictures of kids with Lego and James here on the Mail website.

More details about James May’s Toy Stories.

If you were one of the ones who queued, regardless of if you got in or not, there’s a Facebook group for you.

I’ll post if I hear of any more news on what build stage it’s at. We’re hoping to go back and view it in all it’s glory!