The slightly more complicated answer is... Mister Rogers.
Depth of field is the area in front and behind your chosen focus point that remains in focus and then slowly gets blurry as you get farther away.
Shallow depth of field only has a narrow slice of the image in focus and gets blurry super quick. This is caused by a large lens aperture and being close to the subject.
Deep depth of field can extend through the entire picture if your aperture is small and you are super far away.
Usually the depth of field lines up with the image sensor of your camera. So if it is tilted forward, the plane of focus matches.
The stuff outside the green area would be blurry. The edges of the green would be slightly blurry. And the dashed green line would be the sharpest area of the photo.
But the tilt-shift lens allows you to create chaos with your plane of focus. In most cases, you would use this to flatten the depth of field so you can get a 2D plane entirely in focus.
If you were to use a normal lens, the bottom left and top right would be blurry.
But with a tilt-shift lens you can do this.
The green area is taking a little nap on the floor.
However, there is an unintended side effect created by this lens. (The "Scheimpflug intersection" if you want to go down the rabbit hole.) You can choose absolutely wacky planes of focus that create a very narrow depth of field over a geographically large area.
Believe it or not, this is when psychology comes into play.
And possibly Mister Rogers.
Our only reference for such a large area having a shallow depth of field is our memories of miniatures on TV. So Mister Rogers and Thomas the Tank Engine trained our brains to see this effect as... small.
Depth of field shrinks the closer you are to something. And when filming miniatures, you are placing the lens close to the scene. But the scene represents something big in our minds. We buy the effect, but not 100%. That blurriness wouldn't be there at a regular scale. So our subconscious remembers we are watching small things pretending to be big. It just files that away in the back of our mind.
And then when we see something like this...
Our brain is all, "Look at all that tiny shit!"
Without Mister Rogers, our brains may have never made these connections and tilt-shift photography may just make us wonder why everything is all blurry. That connection to past experience is vital for this effect to be convincing.
Just to be clear, I'm saying this is based on an experiential frame of reference.
Mister Rogers is an example but not the only reference point in existence.
I do think Mister Rogers is probably hugely influential due to being on the air and in repeats for half a century. And since it was shown to almost every American child and since this effect was prevalent in the opening song of the show in every episode, I imagine this is the main reference point for many people.
But it could also be from seeing toy photography or toy commercials or diorama photography or stop motion movies or Team America.
You may not even remember what trained your brain.
I also wanted to mention several of the examples were created using a filter in Photoshop. Actually I was afraid one of them was A.I. because of a comment someone left, but I was able to verify it was based on an actual photography.
I don't know if people feel this effect is less authentic or less special if done using a filter, but I'm afraid most of these photos are created that way and not with the actual lens.
That said, I have verified the following photos were taken with an *actual* tilt-shift lens and were not Photoshopped, just to make sure you have some authentic examples.
The reason so many fake miniature shots are, well, fake... is because tilt-shift lenses are expensive and uncommon. Most people who own them are busy doing architectural and real estate photography—as the *actual* main function of this lens is to straighten the perspective of buildings and not making things look like toys.
Also, this effect is harder to achieve than just using a special lens. You need to be in an elevated position looking down. If you are straight on with a level perspective it just looks like normal background blur. You also need a scene that lends itself to the effect. It needs to have people or cars or buildings that can be captured from an elevated perspective.
The other issue is that the most common tilt-shift lenses available are not very telephoto. You have to be far away for the best results and wide angle lenses make it hard to get a good composition.
The best options are probably these lenses from Canon.
But they are both over $2000.
I would say unless all you ever want to do is take fake miniature photos, you're probably better off just using the Photoshop filter. It still looks cool. And I feel like you still need to put in the work to get a good composition and an interesting subject. But some people are still going to feel cheated if it wasn't actually done with the proper lens.
There are some inexpensive tilt-shift adapters but I haven't researched them and do not know if they work well for this kind of photo.
Or you could get a large format technical camera.
That seems like it would be fun to drag to the roof of a building.
because a decade ago gt circles were so volatile and misogynistic that most wlw and giant women deleted their blogs and stopped making things. because to this day you can’t draw a giantess without someone assuming it’s automatically fetish art. because gt wlw art is seen on the same level as graphic sex. because angry or suggestive or flirty giant male content is okay, but a giantess in those same roles is immediately 18+ content.
because people in this community are still weird about women.
turns out if you dehumanize and oversexualize an entire group of people, those people usually leave.
Hey, merry Christmas @rainydaygt ! You're my secret santa giftee!
I love Mouser's design - I kinda wish I'd gone with a different pose because this one meant skipping over all the details in their outfit aha, but hopefully they enjoy the attention
and thank you to @gt-jar for putting the event together, even with technical difficulties
It's holiday time! Whether you celebrate, something else or not is cool. But this year thought it be fun to make a little something, and future some of my friends and mutuals!
Thinking DC g/t thoughts again. Hm... I think speedsters should be tiny. It's just the vibes I get from them. Small and fast. Sizeshifting is there, of course, but they zip around your feet and you're afraid you're going to step on them.
I mean. You can't because they're too fast, but you're worried about it all the same.
I feel like people in the g/t community can never just casually like g/t, like, you're either absolutely obsessed with it or don't know of it's existence, I know damn well yall think about g/t every second of every day like me, there's no middle ground
Unlike knitting, I don't know of any examples of crochet in g/t media, but I am also not all-knowing, so feel free to add to the conversation if there's an example out there! In the meantime, I'll just give a brief overview of the craft, and go straight to how I think it could be used in g/t settings, and real life examples that give me g/t vibes.
Crochet is the art of turning yarn into fabric using a single hooked tool. In contrast to knitting, which involves several live stitches on the needles worked one after another in a row, crochet is worked one stitch at a time. It's a lot younger than knitting, so it's taken a bit to build up to a similar level of popularity, but it's quite versatile!
The Potential
I'm surprised that there aren't more examples of crochet in g/t since one needs only one tool and some yarn! I can see giants carving down some tough wood into a workable tool easily enough. Tinies could be similarly resourceful with building materials, maybe bending some wire into a hook they can use. Depending on the size of the tiny, they might even be able to use the broken-off ends of steel crochet hooks, which are used for exceptionally fine work (more on that later).
It is also possible to crochet even without a tool! This is probably more feasible for tinies than giants, depending on how well they can source yarn, since this skill is easier to achieve when using chunkier-weight yarn. The nature of crochet, working one stitch at a time, makes this much easier to achieve using just your fingers than knitting!
Crochet is also good for odd shapes since they can be achieved using only the same tool as you'd need to make any old rectangle! This is why it's popular to make dolls and toys using crochet, and the relatively more sturdy nature of the knotted stitches makes it good for practical use in baskets as well.
Real Life G/T Vibes
Similarly to knitting, I get tiny vibes from things made with big, chunky yarn. I also love that it's easy to make baskets and bags with crochet; being able to easily create something practical like that seems like an important skill for tinies!
Super Chunky Hexagon Cardigan by Michelle Greenberg via Ravelry.com
And from the giant side of things, there's actually a much bigger micro-crochet trend than there is in knitting! Those extra-fine steel hooks I mentioned earlier come in handy for it, along with thread thin enough to use with them. It's easy enough to use any old crochet pattern and make it super teeny tiny, and plenty of people do!
Please do let me know if there are examples of crochet in g/t media that I'm not aware of! And if you're interested in more conversations like this, please join our discord channel!
