Cameras and trains just go together. Find any location with a really good view of some railroad tracks and you’re likely to see someone there with a camera, waiting for just the right moment to capture an award winning picture, or maybe just a nice photo to show his friends. If you’re one of those folks, you may have heard of tilt-shift photography, a technique that transforms the photos you take into something amazing where real scenes appear to be photos of models and miniature landscapes. Very neat!
The video below is from Europe, so the trains have that distinctively European appearance, but while you watch it, keep in mind, these are real trains, not models. The way the depth of field is manipulated with this technique, it would be easy to convince someone you stumbled onto a fantastic model railroad and made this video to record the experience.
Your brain can fool you
This video shows how your brain uses a few clues in the scene and makes you think you’re looking at a tiny model when you’re not. The effect is most pronounced on really big landscape photography like cities and towns, but train photos fit right in, especially at longer distances.
OK, who’s going to be the first Lake Shore Railway Historical Society member to take some tilt-shift train photos somewhere in our area? If you do and send them in, we’ll post them for everyone to see.
Check out the video and see what you think.