Wild Art: Photos of the Fort Worth Stock Show, Downtown Dallas and Los Lonely Boys

by Laura Seewoester

This week our Flickr community has shared photos of some bull riding at the Fort Worth Stock Show, pics from around the metroplex and some show pics from the Granada. Also included is a photo of the swank new restaurant in Reunion Tower. Fancy.

Tips and Tricks

A few Flickrers in last week's gallery displayed some of their tilt-shift skills, so I thought it would be a good time to explain a thing or two about tilt-shift photography.

Say Wha? Tilt-shift is when you change the lens plane relative to the film plane, thus manipulating the depth-of-field. This obviously alters the end result giving any image a unique look, and is often used to create miniature looking images.

And how do we do this? There are a few ways to achieve the tilt-shift effect. First, you can buy or rent a special lens, either a Lensbaby or a Tilt-Shift lens. A Lensbaby is fun to play with and gives you funky depth-of-field. A Tilt-Shift Lens will offer more control and will often make your subject appear to be miniature. The lens works by tilting the lens in relation to the image plane and looks something like this.

As with most special photography effects, you can create an effect by manipulating your camera, or by manipulating the image in Photoshop. Now simply clicking on the blur tool and running it around the image of your choice will not cut it (I know, I tried and failed). Here is a really good tutorial. Even though it's long, it is pretty straight forward and easy to follow. The basic idea is to blur everything in an image except on a very small plane. This is the quicker way to do it in post production, and once you get the hang of it you can play around with the blur and the gradient to achieve different looks. You can also play around with the saturation and your curves to make your image look especially fake and mini. Local artist Beau Comeaux manipulates the focus in his work to create a similar effect, although he works on a much bigger scale. His works are more like tilt-shift on steroids and take much longer to create a finished image.

Have a question or suggestion on photo tips? Send me a note.