Tilt-shift photography is a technique that manipulates a photo's focus and depth-of-field to make an image of a place or street scene look like a lavishly a detailed scale model.
When done well, the look is so convincing that the resulting photos are sometimes compared to model railroad layouts -- and all the more so when the subject matter happens to include an actual railcar:
Yet as is often the case with simulacra -- think marble laminate, tofurkey, and most of Las Vegas -- prolonged exposure to tilt-shift photography can have the effect of nurturing a craving for the real thing.
This may explain why we have avoided the temptation to dabble in tilt-shift photography ourselves. Tilt-shift is about manipulating pictures to make real things look fake... but we prefer to take photographs of real model railroads that look like fake versions of things that are supposed to be real.
Or something like that.
Anyhow, in that spirit, here's a tilt-fake photo of an intermodal shipping container yard:
And here's a photo of an intermodal yard we took at the Golden State Model Railroad Museum in Richmond, California:
Here's a HO Scale cyclist biking past a plastic model greenhouse that bears an uncanny resemblance to a tilt-shift photo of a cyclist biking past a greenhouse:
And here's an N Scale lumberyard with fake logs that look a lot like real logs intended to look fake:
We've posted several more fake tilt-shift fakes at our new Model Railways photoset. It's a work in progress, so check back from time to time to see what's new.
Images: Model railroads by Telstar Logistics. Streetcar tilt-shift by Raymond Moreno. Intermodal tilt-shft by Hipolito Gonzales.
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