1. Take a photo of a scene, not a close up shot of one or more subjects.
2. Make sure your scene has both near and far areas.
3. Photos taken from up high looking down at an angle or from ground level on a slope work best.
4. Start by trying to have your focus on the middle of the scene, though focusing on the top or bottom can work.
5. Seek a scene that you could imagine as a miniature or model.
6. Shoot your photo in daylight and aim for a distinct object or objects.
This list - it is a nice list. A tidy list. Straight forward and simple. And yet the task was more daunting that I had thought it might be for a couple of reasons. First off, I was in a hurry and only had about an hour to shoot before I had to be at a conference, and second, right now my city is blanketed in what I like to refer to as the “brown frown” (a nasty layer of inversion/smog) so getting a lovely sunlit shot was near impossible.
Despite the non-ideal shooting situation, I pressed on. Here are the results of two shots, one inside and one outside (in the mountains above the “brown frown”):
And here are the lessons I took away from this little exercise:
• Even though I didn’t end up with shots that I thought were spectacular, I have internalized my list of pointers and am certain that in the future I will find perfect tilt shift moment to shoot and convert with this fun little tool.
• A mediocre shot can benefit immensely from a tool like tilt shift.
• Rules are made to be broken. Many of the shots posted in the Homeschool Project group are not from above, don’t have near/far areas, are not of a “scene”, and yet they look fantastic.
Thanks so much to all of you who chose to take on the homework for this week's lesson. You all get A's for effort and B's for badassness. I'd love to hear about what you learned. What were your triumphs and “aha” moments when trying out this tool?
Also, stay tuned for next week's lesson:
It Don't Matter if You're Black & White (or maybe it does)
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