Fake Miniature
Overview
Miniature faking, also known as diorama effect or diorama illusion, is a process in which a photograph of a life-size location or object is made to look like a photograph of a miniature scale model. Blurring parts of the photo simulates the shallow depth of field normally encountered in close-up photography, making the scene seem much smaller than it actually is; the blurring can be done either optically when the photograph is taken, or by digital postprocessing.
Process
In this project we simulated the diorama effect by digital postprocessing with 2 basic operations: (1) Image contrast enhancement, and (2) Layered gaussian blur. In order to produce the layered gaussian blur, we iterativepy apply a gaussian filter with an increasing sigma as a function of distrance from the region of interest. To top it all off, we add color enhancement to give a more 'scenic' result.
Fake Miniatures are fun, and easy! This neat trick is achievable with a simple blur operator, and produces what looks like highly detailed lego pieces. Choosing an appropriate image is critical, as can be seen in the bloopers part where the tent image, standing too close to the camera, gave a relatively bad result. On the contrary, the image of the Baha'i temple produced a great example of what seem as a 'fake miniature'. Thus, this technique works best on aerial photos (or at a large enough angle) containing structures that are far enough from the lens as to be able to be perceived as small in the human eye.
Vertigo Shot
Overview
Vertigo Shot, also known as dolly zoom, is an in-camera effect that appears to undermine normal visual perception.
The effect is achieved by manipulating the zoom lens to adjust the field of view while the camera dollies (moves) toward or away from the subject in such a way as to keep the subject the same size in the frame throughout. In its classic form, the camera angle is pulled away from a subject while the lens zooms in, or vice versa. Thus, during the zoom, there is a continuous perspective distortion, the most directly noticeable feature being that the background appears to change size relative to the subject.The visual appearance for the viewer is that either the background suddenly grows in size and detail and overwhelms the foreground, or the foreground becomes immense and dominates its previous setting, depending on which way the dolly zoom is executed. As the human visual system uses both size and perspective cues to judge the relative sizes of objects, seeing a perspective change without a size change is a highly unsettling effect, often with strong emotional impact.
Process
As mentioned in the Overview, in order to produce a Vertigo Shot I simply kept the main object the same size; at each frame the object of interest is constant in size relative to the photographer. Thus, as I get closer to the object I zoom-out, this produces the unsettling effect of the vertigo shot - while the object stays the same the background keeps evolving... creepy!
Results
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Viewer discretion advised.
Conclusion
The Vertigo Shot, or Dolly zoom, is a awe inspring technique that brings forth confusion and unsettling emotions to the beholder. Producing an effect that was used in so many hollywood films, and pioneered in Hitchcock's Vertigo, was a sheer delight and a great experience. I learned how fun it is to experiement with the camera, and enjoyed delivering such stimulating results!
Photographs of cities were under a free-license and downloaded online, while all other photographs were taken by the author, Eilam Levitov. I would like to thank Prof. Alexei Efros and the CS194-26 Fall 2017 staff for a great semester, I have learned a lot and enjoyed every moment!
