Tilt Shift Photography Comes to Advertising

I’ve was an early fan of tilt shift photography, the method of tilting the focal plane on a view camera to cause distortion, or of using a tilt s...

I’ve was an early fan of tilt shift photography, the method of tilting the focal plane on a view camera to cause distortion, or of using a tilt shift lens on a manual camera. I originally saw this technique used by Olivo Barbieri for his aerial waterfalls project. And then there was the stunningly cool Vincent Laforet imagery in Play Magazine, which I’ve mentioned before. I loved the miniaturized-feel of the landscapes. Lots of this kind of imagery popped up; Ben Thomas made a whole site out of it, called Cityshrinker, and Toni Hafkenscheid starting using the technique within a square format.

Then tilt shift hit flickr; first with tilt shift pools, and then with fake tilt shift pools (there are several pools for each)…

Boing Boing helped us out by pointing us to a Photoshop tutorial for making fakes. Tilt shift was officially mainstream. BUT, today was the first time I’ve seen tilt shift used in advertising. Specifically in Spain and Germany, in ads for Mazda and Toys ‘R’ Us, respectively. And now I think my tilt shift buzz is officially wearing off. These images feel boring and old, already. Our love is dead, tilt shift, and advertising killed it. I can’t even tell if the ads are fake tilt shift, or real. Although that helicopter in Cologne looks weird. Can you tell?

photo by Olivo Barbieri