Imagined blur

A gimmick. Processing trickery. Whatever you want to call it, we have all seen the so-called “miniature” effect where the image is artificially blurred at the top and bottom creating the illusion of a miniature scene captured with the narrow depth of field of a macro lens. It works well with a shot from a skyscraper looking down on the city streets below and especially well in video, preferably with speeded up motion. Little ants marching.

My camera has a filter setting for this effect, as do many others. I play around with it once in a while, mostly when I’m bored, but I rarely take a photo with that in mind. Maybe next time I am on a top floor of a skyscraper. But no skyscrapers can be found out in the country where I took this shot. I snapped this photo of an old house on an adjacent hillside and afterwards wondered how the effect would look. I knew that it wouldn’t transform the image into “Smallville”, since the elements weren’t in place for that effect, but I thought it may add a unique look to the photo. And that it did.  More like a weird tilt-shift thing but fun nonetheless.

As for the composition, I kind of like the house peeking out from behind the pine tree. To get the whole house view I would have had to drop in elevation to my right causing more foreground trees to get in the way, which would have obstructed the house anyway. So I stuck with this. Sometimes you have to compromise.

Please click on photo for larger view. I kept this one bigger than normal, to better view the effect.

Since this is probably going to be my last post until after Thanksgiving, I want to wish all of my USA readers a safe and happy holiday. I certainly give thanks every day and I want to especially give thanks to all of my readers, all over the world. Your visits and support mean a lot to me.