Putting things in perspective

October 10th, 2007

Japanese photographer Naoki Honjo has some amazing work.

Using special lenses, filters and techniques of photo editing, he takes pictures from high above famous cities in such a way that makes them seem like toy-train miniatures.

I realized the depth-of-field effect that emulates macro photography is the main reason for this notion of a miniature-like setting, but I’m still trying to figure out how does he achieve such smooth, paper-like textures on the buildings and pavements.

An exhibition of some of his work is going on in London, until October 12^th.

German photographer Marc Raeder produces some similar work (samples here, and here).

Update: Rodrigot forwarded me the url for CityShrinker, site of australian artist Ben Thomas, which has very similar work.

Update: James writes in to tell that, apparently, this is becoming very common, and that this Flickr group has a lot of examples and even links to tutorials on the technique. By the time of this writing, the group had 8,558 pictures posted!

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