For the past couple of months, I’ve been carrying a tilt-shift lens or two in my bag when walking between assignments in Chicago’s Loop.
When used as intended, tilt-shift lenses correct the perspective to eliminate wide-angle distortion. They’re commonly used in architectural photography.
But they can instead be used to alter the plane of focus by rotating the front of the lens so it’s no longer parallel to the digital sensor. This creates a narrow band of focus while the rest of the image falls into steep blur.
The effect tricks your eye into thinking you’re seeing a miniature version of reality. Your brain thinks that if the focus changes that dramatically between objects, you must be very close to them and looking at tiny figures in a scale model.
These photos were a trial-and-error experiment to see what worked best. The miniature effect is most apparent when I was at a higher elevation. It also seems to work more often with the 90 mm telephoto version of the tilt-shift than the 24 mm, the two focal lengths I tried.
This is a work in progress for me; there are more landmarks I’m seeking and others I’m looking to improve. Just have to remember to keep that tilt-shift in my back pocket.
