So you’ve travelled and taken lots of digital photos. Now you are now home, pining for the next adventure. What to do? Why not dust off your travel pictures and have some fun?
You could show them to your friends and family again, but apparently that is boring (note to self: why aren’t people more interested in my personal travels??) and results in a lonely life.
So instead, spice up the photos with some cool effects then share them around – you’ll get a much better response and have some fun in the meantime. One of my favourite effects is to make a photo look as though it was taken of a toy instead of the real thing. The effect is created by shrinking the depth of field so the photo looks as if it was taken with a macro (closeup) lens. It also helps to increase the colour saturation to make things look like plastic and more toy like.
Geeking out with your travel photos
When this effect was first introduced a year or two ago, it was very time consuming and required Photoshop expertise to get a good result. Fortunately for us, some smart folks made a website that does all the hard work! Better yet, it’s free at Tiltshiftmaker.com. Load your photo by either entering a link to an online photo or uploading an image directly.
Once the image is loaded, you can move the focus point around (as well as shrink or enlarge it). There are lots more settings, but I’ve found the defaults to be fine for generating very cool toy-like photos. Here are some examples I made:
San Francisco Balcony... and the toy version
This is a rooftop terrace I could see from my hotel balcony in Japan Town, San Francisco. When I took the photo I was fascinated by the details, but the end result was a bit busy and not too interesting. After adding the fake model effects, you can see it’s much more fun and I’ve had a couple people argue with me that it HAD to be a toy model! I had to show them the original photos to convince them otherwise.
MOMA, or plaything?
This photo of MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) in NYC was also a bit of a letdown in its original form but after manipulation it became a scene from an architect’s model. I love the way even the people look like toys from a model railroad setup.
Grand Central Toy Station
The last example is New York’s Grand Central Station. The original was the same as a million other photos taken by tourists like me, but with some tilt and shift action it becomes a miniature world of commuters, racing to the next HO-scale train.
Tips on making playthings of your photos
Not all photos are good candidates for fake model effects. I found photos taken from above, so it feels like the viewer is a giant looking down at a scale model work the best. It’s also important that any people in the photos appear to be fairly small so they are not too easily recognised as the real thing.
Lastly it helps if the photo does not include a massively complex background (like a city or something) as it makes the scene a bit unbelievable (who’d build a 50 block model city?). Remember we’re trying to trick the viewer’s brain into perceiving the photo is of a model.
Give it a go – it’s lots of fun and very easy to do. Your friends and family will actually enjoy revisiting your travel photos and it will help fill the time until you can experience the real thing again yourself!
-Jeff Lewis
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