Olivo Barbieri’s aerial photographs 30 Jun 2006
11 comments Latest by Nick
In Olivo Barbieri’s aerial photographs, people look like ants and cities like toy models. He shoots from a helicopter using a tilt-shift lens. He says that “allows me to choose what I really like in focus: like in a written page, we don’t read [it as an] image but one line at a time.” There’s a profile of him w/ some photos at Metropolis mag’s site and more photos at the Yancey Richardson gallery site.
If you dig the effect but want a cheaper solution (tilt shift lenses are a bit pricey), here’s a hack for building your own tilt-shift lens. Or try Lensbabies, selective focus SLR camera lenses, which bring one area of a photo into sharp focus surrounded by graduated blur. Too bad there’s no hack for building your own helicopter.
11 comments so far (Jump to latest)
jamie 30 Jun 06
I love looking at these photos. Thanks for the links to the more affordable hacks. A tilt-shift lens is not really in my budget right now.
And for the more adventurous, you could try this helicopter hack: http://www.vortechonline.com/aw95/. Not bad for $6000-$8000.
Kendall 30 Jun 06
You’re spot on on saying it looks like toy models. Amazing visual effects. Thanks for sharing.
Aaron 30 Jun 06
There’s a flickr group for “faked” tilt shift images that people might also enjoy
http://www.flickr.com/groups/tilt-shift-fakes/pool/
Michael 30 Jun 06
Those pictures are really cool.
Matthias 08 Jul 06
The finnish artist Miklos Gaal uses the same technique to come up with great art: http://www.herrmannwagner.com/deutsch/01kuenstler/gaal/Miklos-Gaal.html (sorry, site in German)