Olivo Barbieri’s aerial photographs 30 Jun 2006
11 comments Latest by Nick
In Olivo Barbieri’s aerial photographs, people look like ants and cities like toy models. He shoots from a helicopter using a tilt-shift lens. He says that “allows me to choose what I really like in focus: like in a written page, we don’t read [it as an] image but one line at a time.” There’s a profile of him w/ some photos at Metropolis mag’s site and more photos at the Yancey Richardson gallery site.
If you dig the effect but want a cheaper solution (tilt shift lenses are a bit pricey), here’s a hack for building your own tilt-shift lens. Or try Lensbabies, selective focus SLR camera lenses, which bring one area of a photo into sharp focus surrounded by graduated blur. Too bad there’s no hack for building your own helicopter.
11 comments so far (Jump to latest)
jamie 30 Jun 06
I love looking at these photos. Thanks for the links to the more affordable hacks. A tilt-shift lens is not really in my budget right now.
And for the more adventurous, you could try this helicopter hack: http://www.vortechonline.com/aw95/. Not bad for $6000-$8000.
Kendall 30 Jun 06
You’re spot on on saying it looks like toy models. Amazing visual effects. Thanks for sharing.
Amit Gupta 30 Jun 06
We covered a Photoshop tip to get the same effect in Photojojo:
http://www.photojojo.com/content/post-processing/miniature-model-effect-photoshop/
Amit
Coudal 30 Jun 06
Nice tutorial on the same.
http://www.recedinghairline.co.uk/tutorials/fakemodel/index.html
Aaron 30 Jun 06
There’s a flickr group for “faked” tilt shift images that people might also enjoy
http://www.flickr.com/groups/tilt-shift-fakes/pool/
RSL 30 Jun 06
My roommate’s been using a lot of those Photoshop techniques on his photoblog, Mahilly. Mostly the older ones, in case you want to hit the archives to check them out.
Michael 30 Jun 06
Those pictures are really cool.
Daniel Morrison 01 Jul 06
A friend took a bunch of amazing tilt-shift photos of Chicago:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/richevenhouse/sets/72157594167245139/
Alistair Allan 06 Jul 06
A tilt and shif lense won’t really get you the same effect… you can get a cheap effect using a lense baby… but it’s not the same.
To achive the real effect you need a large format camera a very wide angle lense and shoot at the widest aperutre.
The combination of the wide angle lense/large format film (I’m talking 8x10 inches!!) and wide aperture creates and extremely shallow depth of field combine this with a modified bellows/rails camera to allow you to focus on subjects 500ft away and there you have it!
Using a tilt and shift lense on a 35mm camera will only give you this effect on items less than a meter or so away even at the widest aperture on offer in these types of lenses!
As for the equivalent photoshop effects, they are ok, but noticeably flawed. To achieve this effect properly would require manually photoshopping the subject based on distance to try and recreate the extreme depth of field.
Try the calcualtions yourself:
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/DOF-calculator.htm
Matthias 08 Jul 06
The finnish artist Miklos Gaal uses the same technique to come up with great art: http://www.herrmannwagner.com/deutsch/01kuenstler/gaal/Miklos-Gaal.html (sorry, site in German)
Nick 10 Jul 06
Also check out Tom Merrilion’s fantastic pictures of Birmingham using a similar method http://www.belfastexposed.com/exhibitions/2001/exhimertom.html
I saw an exhibition in Birmingham of these photos a good few years ago. Up close they were amazing!
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