Tea Plantation


Tea Plantation, originally uploaded by Kenji Images.

It's been a year since I've uploaded this image to my Flickr site. Today I revisit it again, still charmed by how it turned out.

A bit of imagination and light touches defined how I perceived the Hills of Cameron Highlands to be. I will be making another visit here soon to get more shots like this.

I'll be adding this to my collection of favourites on my Flickr site. Hope you like it as much as I do!

Creating a Unique Tilt-Shift Photography Blurring Effect

In the old days of photography, we often see techniques to create special effects done right from the stage of taking the shot. One creative technique of manipulating the sharpness of a shot and creating a fake depth-of-field look is tilt-shift photography. In the past, this method of displacing the a lens on bellows so that the plane of focus is not at the right angle to the film surface creates a unique effect that has the scene looking almost like a fake miniature.

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| Look mom! Toy cars!!! |

What makes the scene look like a miniature?

When you take close-up of a miniature set, the first thing that sets the scene is the angle that you are shooting from. Usually, from a 25 degree to a 45 degree angle would be how you may be standing above the set to take the shot of the scene. The second factor is the shallow depth-of-field that will usually result as you are taking a close-up or almost a macro shot of the scene right up close. These two factors are what is required for your mind to perceive the view of a miniature scene.

Highlighting the focus of your shot.

This technique can also be used to the extreme level to highlight the focus of your picture. Such as in portraiture, you can simulate the effect by putting the focus of your subject rendered sharp whilst keeping everything else in the scene blur.

Sometimes in a particularly busy scene, you may resort to this technique to reduce the focus on distracting elements. Applying this technique keeps your scene simple and clean.

How do you simulate a tilt-shift photography blurring effect?

Step 1 : Picking your Shots

Cars Once you have understood the fundamentals behind creating the effects as explained above, take a look at your shots to determine the right shots that can be used to create this effect. In this tutorial, we will be using a shot taken from an apartment building overlooking buildings below. It’s also best to work with a shot that has more or less diffused lighting conditions as that is usually the case when you shoot miniatures indoors.

Step 2 : Creating a Layer Mask for the Blurring Effect

layermask Using Adobe Photoshop, you first begin by creating a second layer of the same image and also a layer mask. When you do your lens blurring, the layer mask will be used to determine which part of your picture will be sharp and which blurred. Remember with the tilt-shift technique, the area which is sharp is very narrow.

Step 3 : Masking the Sharp Area

maskgradient Next, use the gradient tool and create a 2-sided gradient by dragging across a horizontal plane. Make sure you use a black layer mask to ensure that the area covered by it will be sharp when you apply the lens blur.

Step 4 : Using Lens Blur

lensblur

Adobe Photoshop has a lens blur option where you can get quite authentic looking lens blur with the options of adjusting the details and settings of an actual lens. To create the effect using lens blur will take longer than the normal Gaussian blur technique but the result is much better.

Step 5 : Setting the Depth Map

depthmap In the Lens Blur menu, select Layer Mask from the Depth Map drop-down menu. The blurring effect will be applied to your earlier layer mask.

Step 6 : Lens Characteristic Settings

iris The options under the Iris menu are settings for the characteristics of your lens such as Shape (the number of aperture leaves that your lens has), Radius, Blade Curvature and Rotation. Experiment with the settings to determine the best outlook for your shot. You don’t have to be too bothered about the specular highlights settings unless you are going for details.

Step 7 : Remove Layer Mask

deletelayermask

Next remove the layer mask which you had set earlier

cars_after You’ll end up with a shot that looks like a miniature version of the real world. This is a fun technique which you can apply to different subjects, provided you take the shot from the right angle. Here are several more examples of what you can do with this technique.

Before & After

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Have fun trying it out!