Back at last

Early last week, Anika, my three year old daughter became violently ill. Then Summer, my wife fell sick, then it was my turn. It was a pretty awful week, but we are all well on the mend now and all on antibiotics. These next few days I'll be trying to get caught up on my work.

A couple of weeks ago I rented a perspective control lens. This lens allows you to use tilts and shifts to alter the focal plane. Most often this type of manipulation is done with large format cameras, but I wanted to try it on my full-frame DSLR. For a while I've been fascinated by the potential for using tilts to enhance selective focus in portraits. You can see a couple of photos experimenting with this.

The first one is of Anika. The effect is subtle here, but you can see the plane of focus cut across her eyes. In the next image the lens was able to be used to isolate her while sitting at a table with Summer.

I also went for a bike ride with my camera and tried to experiment with "false miniaturization" which is an optical illusion created by using selective focus to make your mind see subjects in an image tiny models. I discovered that the angle of view is just as important as the use of selective focus. You can see that in the image looking up at the bridge there is no miniaturization. However, the illusion is achieved nicely while looking down from the bridge onto a condo complex.

It would be interesting to try to incorporate this illusion into photographs of people. I'll have to work on that.