Tilt-shift photograph is defined on Wikipedia as:

The use of camera movements on small- and medium format cameras. In many cases, it refers to tilting the lens relative to the image plane and using a large aperture to achieve a very shallow depth of field. The technique relies on the Scheimpflug principle and usually requires the use of special lenses.

If that made as little sense to you as it did to me, I think the easiest way to explain tilt-shift is to say that you can make a photo of the real world look like it's a picture of tiny models. Tilt-shifting seems to be all the rage right now and there is a lot of cool tilt-shift work coming out as of late. A prime example is this video of a real monster truck race, but that's processed like a tilt-shift photo:

Metal Heart from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Pretty neato, huh?

The thing is, I figured that no matter how much I like the tilt-shift style, I'd never be able to make my own since I can't even understand the definition of what tilt-shifting actually is. But since this is the Intarwebs, someone has taken the time to create a website that allows you to take your own photos and make them look like tilt-shifts. The site is called (big stretch on the name here) TiltShiftMaker.com.

Here's an example of what you can do. First, a photo from Tenerife in the original form:

and here is the post tilt-shift version:

Fancy, eh?

Now if I could only figure out how to use this technology to make my feet look smaller in photos...

Posted by James at 07:13 PM | Permalink

Cooliris is a cinematic style browser application that lets you search images and videos on major search engines and websites in a smooth and speedy way. It just won a much deserved Crunchie Award in the category of Best Design, and while it may not revolutionize the way we search, it sure makes looking for pictures and videos a hell of a lot prettier.

Head over to the Cooliris site, download it, and let me know what you think.

Posted by James at 07:46 PM | Permalink

Here is a very interesting blog post from Greg Sterling at Search Engine Land about a recent Nielsen and WebVisible study that found an major gap between the use of search engines to find local businesses and the time and money local businesses are spending on marketing on search engines.

My favorite stat was that people consider the following as their primary tool for finding local business information:

Search engines - 50%
Print yellow pages - 24%
Online yellow pages - 10%

So if you're a small business owner, where are you going to put your marketing dollars in 2009?

Check out the post for all the details and to see how small business owners feel about their marketing efforts.

Posted by James at 07:29 PM | Permalink

...that whenever you think you're cool, the universe will put you in check.

Posted by James at 07:27 PM | Permalink

At some point in the middle of the 8-hour overnight stopover of doom in Frankfurt (on the way back from Tenerife in November) I ran across the following scene:

Maybe it was that I was underfed, underslept and freezing cold, but does it not look like two businessmen who just self-upgraded to Follow the White Light Airlines?

Turns out it was just an advertisement for a newspaper that was supposed to look like this:

Since there were ads on either side you could only really understand the whole concept if you saw the ad from up close. Execution fail to be sure. (Pun intended)

So thanks for the laugh Frankfurt, and for proving that in advertising, it's all about the angles.

Posted by James at 03:55 PM | Permalink