This is a Photoshop technique that (kind of) duplicates what a tilt-shift lens can do. A good tilt-shift lens runs $900+, so I'll settle for the Photoshop technique.
We went up to the "Y" mountain today and I thought looking down over Seen Peaks would be a good candidate for a tilt-shift. Essentially, the technique uses depth of field to trick you into thinking what you're seeing is miniaturized, when in reality, it's not. I got this trick out of a photography magazine a while ago, but I can't remember all the steps they used. This is a culmination of what I do remember, and what I know about Photoshop. If anyone is interested in the technique, let me know and I'll tell you how I did it:
Mushna bought me the Canon 580 EX II speedlite for my camera which can trigger my 430 EX wirelessly. Today I went to Pictureline and bought an umbrella and light stand so we went up to Hobble Creek to give it a try. I'm pretty impressed with my first attempt at using the flash off-camera. Everything was dialed in manually, including my camera and the power of the flash.
Saturday we headed up to Ogden Utah to visit the Renaissance Festival. While this normally isn't my thing, the promise of full contact jousting definitely sounded interesting. Here are some photos.
This week's been really busy. We went to Las Vegas last weekend and this Monday I came back to a project at work that was unlike anything I've seen before. The survey was on the verge of exceeding Advantage's (which is the table which the data in) limits. After outputting the data, I was looking at just under 45,000 columns. So much data. Our data program didn't know how to handle it so I had to set up well over 500 field types manually which took all of one day. Checking the data took three full days. I also had a second ugly project which wasn't as large, but much more intense logic-wise. I've been too tired to do much of anything when I get home besides watch movies/TV.
We bought a blu-ray player recently and have started accumulating a blu ray dvd collection. I was skeptical of the cost for a blu ray player at first, but we found a Samsung model that was relatively cheap (comparatively) which allows us to stream netflix to the TV. Oh, and blu ray is AMAZING. The first movie we watched was iRobot because we found it really cheap. I couldn't believe my eyes. Absolutely stunning. We bought Terminator 2 a few days later and while there are some scenes which didn't clean up as well, most of it looks pretty incredible.
I finally received my rebate gift card from the SanDisk memory cards I purchased at the beginning of the year so we went blu ray shopping again. I picked up Aviator and Casino. Aviator is one of my favorite movies of all time so I was excited to see it on blu ray. It does not disappoint. The picture is by far the best thing I've ever seen on a television and the sound is crystal clear.
Casino, despite being an older film, is also a great looking blu ray.
I've decided I'm going to own all of Scorsese's films in blu ray. I think it's a worthy endeavor.
Las Vegas was a lot of fun. Friday we drove down and pretty much just hung out at the hotel until the Leah Solanga show. While her music is the furthest thing from my taste, I do have to hand it to her musical director and the guitarist she had touring with her. Both were incredibly talented guys. The whole band was, but those two stood out the most. The musical director was not only directing the band, but the pianist. There were many instances of him directing with one hand and playing with the other. It was interesting to watch.
Saturday we did some wondering around the strip. Here are a few photos:
Unfortunately we were pretty busy most the trip so I wasn't able to view as many casinos as I would have liked. I was a bit self conscious about shooting inside the casinos, too. I've heard some get pretty upset, but surprisingly, I never heard anything from anyone.
Saturday evening we attended the Cirque du Soleil show, Ka in the MGM Grand. The show was one of the coolest things I've ever seen. It really is unreal. One of those things you have to see to believe... And even then, there were times I felt like I was watching a dream. Here is the preview for Ka:
