The City Shrinker

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Ben Thomas‘ work invites close scrutiny. While many of his dioramas are packed with buildings, traffic or crowds, others offer a more sedate view of the world, of boats on a river, desks in a library, or of two men collecting leaves. But Thomas’ images aren’t crafted models, they’re in fact photographs from real life…

“The process of achieving the diorama effect essentially works around shifting or reducing the depth of field in a shot,” explains the Melbourne-based photographer. “This can be done one of two ways; you can change the depth of field in the shot with a tilt-shift lens, or you can use Photoshop (or similar) to do the same thing, with a lot more freedom.

“The final piece in achieving the style is around the colouring and, to be honest, this is what takes the serious hours.”

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Thomas, a graduate of Adelaide’s International Design Effects and Animation School, also recently won the art section of the Australian Sony Projections’ new photographer of the year award.

More of his photography can be seen at cityshrinker.com.

Comments...

Is it just me that wonders how anyone can become famous for that? Surely, this can’t be news to people? Anyone with a basic grasp of Photoshop can achieve similar results (quite convinsing ones as well) in minutes.

martin
02/Oct/08, 12:34 pm

Tilt/shift photography’s been around for aaaages. There’s a huge flickr photostream dedicated to it. It boggles the mind that this chap (while producing good examples) has won a photography award for simply using a technique. If he’d pointed to some aspect of the ‘human condition’ or commented in some way on something then I could understand.

Maybe it’s over my head.

Ed
02/Oct/08, 12:45 pm

Nice work.
I wouldn’t have guessed.

Adaptiv Media
02/Oct/08, 2:29 pm

o.l.d. n.e.w.s.

chimpomatic
02/Oct/08, 2:46 pm

Identical to other photographers such as Miklos Gaal but it has been well mastered and applied for a new photographer.

Dan Gresly
02/Oct/08, 2:54 pm

temtem
02/Oct/08, 3:05 pm

If these were actually miniatures he had made then that would be more impressive. Still, they are well crafted.

Like this
http://www.methodstudios.com/movie/878.html
Geeky? Yes. Good? Also yes.

Stu
02/Oct/08, 3:43 pm

Fair enough if he was the very first to do it, but I doubt he was..

Gareth
02/Oct/08, 4:44 pm

miklos gaal, oliviero barbieri the list goes on and on… All a bit tired now really and heavily reliant as Ed above says on a bit of focus trickery. Derivative and verging on dull.

bucky
02/Oct/08, 7:41 pm

This guy has been around for a long time. The shots look great, who says that only 1 person is allowed to use a technique? Some pretty harsh comments here for a piece of work that is visually solid.

Jason
03/Oct/08, 12:08 am

It’s not that I dislike the work; I think it looks great, I just don’t see how it’s award-winning or in the slightest part innovative because it’s been done so many times before and this doesn’t bring anything (as far as I can see) new to the concept.

Ed
03/Oct/08, 9:37 am

So olllddddd. Some advertising bell-ends have even had time to rip it off, for some recent Expedia tv ads.

Creepers
06/Oct/08, 1:48 pm

Keith Loutit does videos with same technique. Nice.

http://www.vimeo.com/keithloutit

Gary
11/Oct/08, 9:08 pm

Its a technique for gods sake, why can’t a photographer explore a single way of recording an image to put across his perspective?

Scheinflug has been used for a long time in photography and will crop up again. Nothing will ever be entirely ‘new’!

Andrew
23/Oct/08, 12:27 pm

I love these images. They used this technique really creatively - producing colourful, strong images with immediate impact. Making a sometimes mundane scene, much more interesting and engaging to look at.

It’s not a new technique, but the image quality and choice of subject really work. Enjoy them.

Maggie
24/Oct/08, 9:44 am

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