Mathew Farris Senior Portfolio: Topic: Tilt-Shift Photography

Tilt-shift photography refers to the use of camera movement, special lenses, or post-production digital means to achieve an interesting combination of blurred and focused imagery. Large format view cameras have the ability to "tilt" the lens separately from the viewfinder, thus creating an unnatural depth of field. Lenses are also available that "shift" up, down, or across parallel to the image plane to avoid the wide angle effect of bending lines. Lenses with similar capabilities are available for other cameras, but any camera can utilize camera movement in which the point of view is changed during the picture to blur some areas but keep others relatively sharp.

I think a good example of this would be taking a photo from a moving car of a distant barn in a field. Depending on the smoothness of the road and the camera, the barn would remain relatively in focus and sharp, as the point of view pertaining to it didn't change much. The fence line in the foreground would be blurry though, and the grass field would start out blurry and become sharper as it retreats towards the barn. If you had focused on, say, the horse in the middle of that field, you would have probably had to angle the camera a bit to keep it centered, thus the fence and the barn would experience motion and focus blur.

The technique I'm most interested in however, is the digital post-production method of blurring an image to simulate a short depth of field. Most of the images are of landscapes, but it can also be utilized more subtly in things like portraits. It's impossible, I'm assuming, to get a short depth of field with the focal point out in the middle of a landscape using any regular size camera. Therefore when this effect is created digitally through blurring, the mind is tricked into thinking this must be a tabletop miniature rather than a lifesize composition. Upon closer scrutiny though, you can see the amount of reality and detail in the landscape. For this reason the method is usually referred to as "tilt-shift miniature faking." I really want to experiment with this and would love to be able to integrate it into my project.