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Tilt-shift Photography

Tilt-shift photography. Or Diorama effect (sometimes it’s called).

Refers to the use of camera movements on small- and medium-format cameras, and sometimes specifically refers to the use of tilt for selective focus, often for simulating a miniature scene. (Wikipedia)

Some compact cameras, after Olympus first announced having this filter in EP-2, followed suit and introduced this mode as a special feature. It can be interesting, considering how you can make buildings, people etc look cartoon-ish. As if they are ‘ma-sak’ (toys).

“The process of achieving the diorama effect essentially works around shifting or reducing the depth of field in a shot,” explains Ben Thomas, a Melbourne-based photographer. “This can be done one of two ways; you can change the depth of field in the shot with a tilt-shift lens, or you can use Photoshop (or similar) to do the same thing, with a lot more freedom.

It’s not exactly easy to achieve the desired effect, but Same O’Hare, Aero Director/ VFX artist, produced The Sandpit – a time lapse, tilt-shift film of New York life (made up of over 35,000 stills in five days).

It’s cute :) The excellent miniature effect makes one wonder if these were real life photographs at all or not.

The Sandpit from Sam O’Hare on Vimeo.

World Cup Socks

For those die-hard fans out there – get them from Happy Socks.

By New York-based design collective Wong Wong.

Before & after

Adore all the lovely and magical transformations of furniture pieces that are regularly featured on designspongeonline!

Love!

Nothing is original

A circus-themed room!

A CIRCUS room! I want this for my kids next time :p

“…a circus themed room that where whimsical and functional manage to somehow meet..”

(Via designspongeonline)

Heartbreak Warfare

John Mayer’s Heartbreak Warfare – First music video to make use of Augmented Reality.

Volkswagen’s Fun Theory

I always believe that initiatives/campaigns proposed either internally by agencies or ”externally” driven by client, need to be maintained in a passionate way in order to make it work. And by passionate, I mean, people who are inspired from within to want to do it, instead of doing it simply cos of the ”I-was-told-to-do-it-as-part-of-my-job-scope” mindset.

Some initiatives work, some fail. Most of the time I feel, this has more to do with the people behind executing it (not the ideas people though) than the nature/objectives of the campaign.

Volkswagen in Sweden commissioned DDB to do up a ‘Fun Theory‘ site which uses the idea of  ‘fun’ to change people’s behaviour for the better. The public could submit videos/ideas and the winner got to win 2500 pounds. It could be anything, from encouraging people to take the stairs instead of the escalators, to making people obey the speed limit by making it fun to do so.

Check out some of the videos, and because the ultimate objective is to change people’s behavioural attitude for the better, I believe some of these ideas can be executed practically in many day-to-day situations :) All we need now is for the relevant authorities to hear the site out…hmm

Recycle-drinks-cans Vending Machine:

Roller (Coasters)

I am a sucker for quirky stuff:

11 years of Google in 2 mins

The Google Story from Nick Scott Studio Ltd. on Vimeo.

Honda Civic

Wow. Shooting and post-editing must have been hell.