Hi Taike.
Very cool, James. I think the effect works better on photos with people, though. Landscapes and buildings look pretty much normal to me, like they're taken from a condirable distance.
Yeah, I agree. It will likely take me a while until I get a true understanding of what works best, but it seems that people, places where people are, streets, cars or any sort of city / people related objects work much better than landscapes.
Does this kind of photography require any special equipment or is it some kind of technique?
You can buy a tilt shift lens that will allow your camera to take photo's like this. This is what the lens looks like.
Or you can completely fake the effect which is what I'm doing here. You just take a normal photo and in Paint Shop Pro there is a depth of field option in the menu which allows you to draw a rectangle on the image. You simply draw the rectangle in the area of the photo you wish to stay in focus and then the program applies the tilt shift effect. Takes only seconds to turn a normal shot from any camera into one of these miniaturisation photos.
One other key to taking the photo is to be on higher ground. You need to be looking down on your subject so that the perspective of miniaturisation looks far more realistic.
Cheers
James