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!

This Wednesday my Mister and I attended the Future of Web Design conference in Kensington, Londinium. I’d never been to anything like this before so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I found the experience really enjoyable, it was really interesting to be with so many people interested in that kind of thing, and the talks, whilst often things I knew or common sense, still helped bring my mind back to what I should be doing, and what the web’s about.

That said, I’m a student, I’ve worked in industry not even two years. From what I’ve read on other blogs the professionals weren’t as keen on the day as I was, but I do think that had a lot to do with the level of experience – I’m sure a lot of them have been to a lot of conferences. As it was there weren’t many students there at all, just our small crowd from Pompey and maybe one or two others. Definitely a professional day. I did enjoy it and I did find it interesting. I’m glad uni suggested it, and I think the experience was well worth the (hefty) 60 pounds…
I have some not so great photos I’ll probably stick on my flickr next time I’m at home.

These are some of my notes from the day. Made as coherent as possible, I was very tired that day :S

More

Just a general blog about general things. I was thinking about what kind of focus this blog should have, maybe think about target audience, but I think I’d find that too hard. I like to talk about random things, things that go on in my life an so forth. Thus, I suppose my target audience is people with similar interests (I do need to update my profiley thing actually…), and my focus is just plain everything.

I’ve had a good week. Made my second trip to London since I’ve been ill, mostly to see my Mister, mostly It was good to have a day out. I’m not a fan of London but I did have a good day.

We had lunch down at St Paul’s – there’s a large Marks and Sparks food court there, they had this amazing vanilla and maple syrup smoothie thing – lush!

Then we hopped across the river to the Tate Modern. I’m not big on modern art, but I do love Cy Twombley’s ‘Four Seasons‘. Mostly because of the way he uses such a variety of materials, mostly. They’re just stunning pieces. I also really liked ‘Billingual’ by Juan Usle – however I can’t find a good photo of that online.

We were going to get the boat to the Tate Britain but missed the last one, so hung out on the grass outside the Modern for a while since the weather was so nice. Mosied back in a Waterloo direction and watched the sunset from the banks of the Thames over the Houses of Parliament.

We found dinner at a fancy Pizza Express restaurant, and ate far too much. It was so good though. I haven’t been out to dinner in ages, much less taken out to dinner, so I felt really spoilt We wandered down the river and looked at all the lights. All in all, a good day out.

Monday I did my first ever drive to Bognor to see Linz. J used to take me but we used to go the long way round, so going the proper way involved a lot of guesswork and following road numbers. We got some chips and wandered down the beach at dusky time. It was really good to see her.

I took my Mum to Brighton on Tuesday, we went shopping (picked up some guitar strings for the acoustic – my Mister appears to have got me back into playing), and then got ice creams and fell asleep on the beach.

Wednesday I drove up to see my Mister in Harpenden, got stuck in the most horrendous M1 traffic I’ve ever seen, and so came off at the first junction and guessed my way to his, and got quite lucky with my guesses really. Had a couple of nice meals with his family over the duration of my stay – tried some new food too which is unusual for me, it was good.

Friday we came back and went to Sainsbury’s in search of this easter egg I’ve wanted for about a month. They didn’t have it, which is very unfortunate as all their eggs were 75% off and as the one I wanted was a tenner originally, that would have been an amazing deal. I got a different egg that would have been equally expensive – a Lindt chocolate thing with a box of chocolates – and while the chocolates were amazing, there’s no way I would have paid a tenner for it! The Mister picked up a load of little Lindor eggs which were only 13p – if you wish to stock up on chocolate, head over to Sainsbury’s.

The past few days, when not working or doing other things, have been spent playing Sim City 3000. The Mister built up a city together and have actually done quite well so far. We got hold of a copy of SC4 Deluxe, and have developed a region as a starting point for both of us to see how we do things differently. I swore I’d never play Sims games again, but I guess I was mistaken. We’ll have to wait and see how City of Ghosthands does

It does look like I have massively failed with tracking my food, I haven’t been paying attention whatsoever. Well, I have in that I KNOW I haven’t accidentally eaten a desk or something, but I can’t remember really.

I went to Tesco last night in a hunt for some sweetcorn, corn on the cob, for some reason I’m craving yellow food, but they had none, and therefore, we are now at war with Tesco until they provide me with some sweetcorn.

I have also consumed roughly 15 waffles in the last two days, I have a feeling I’m going to turn into one soon. (So I guess I did pay attention…)

My hair is now half pink, yes, pink. And I love it. It’s so me. Amazing how sometimes you can forget how crazy you are, all it takes is hitting some kind of bottom and then remembering, oh, wait a minute, yes, I’m insane and I enjoy every minute of it, everyone else can just deal with it. There’s a photo on my MySpace and there’s a not so clear one as my DA ID. I will try and get some better photos tomorrow, since I’m going to London or something. Hopefully.

We went up to Londinium yesterday. We have this project at uni at the moment which entails some science research and looking at how people engage with science and various things. I didn’t think I’d be well enough to go to London, but really wanted to because there’s so much one could get out of this project. I was also still miserable about not being able to hit the galleries in our two weeks off.

As it was we didn’t make it to the galleries, just the Science and Natural History Museum – both of which were awesome but exhausting. Worth a visit, I really want to go back to the Natural History Museum for a proper nose about.

I might have some photos, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll check the camera in a minute.

Anyway, huge step for me, and I survived. I’m not too tired today despite having to get up at 7am to go do a table top sale. I have to sell a lot of my unnecessary stuff simply because it’s unused clutter – I didn’t make too much today, but will be doing another sale in a few weeks. Hopefully do a bit better.