What is Tilt Shift?

If you don’t know what a Tilt Shift lens is, this chap explains it well. So take a look at this first if you’re interested.

South Leeds Architecture

There are some interesting new buildings in the south of Leeds these days – this first one is the Leeds College of buildings, created by Fuse Architects. For this shot I went to the middle of the road island ans use the 17mm tillt shift lens. I took 3 photos – one with the lens shifted up, one in the middle and one down. So the view here is actually incredibly wide – and notice that all the vertical lines are – well…. vertical!

This next building is Indigo – taken just meters away from the college shot. It’s a HDR of 3 images, each 2-stops apart.

This building is incredibly angular and the 17mm TS lens makes the most of this. I’ve left  part of the image pretty empty as I’m sure in the future this area will fill with new buildings, so this will become a unique shot over time

Indigo again – from the same place as the previous shot, just rotated the camera through 20-30 degrees to the left to get both lanes of traffic and the traffic island in shot. The processing on this is very cool to compliment the “indigo” name 🙂

New Dock, formerly Clarence Dock, has lots of linear architecture – here we have the armouries to the left, flats to the right and tower at the end. To get this view I took 2 HDR shots, one low down to get the boat and water, the other high up for the sky and buildings.

They were blended in Photomatix with the exact same settings and then a pano created in LIGHTROOM – as that does the job and is INCREDIBLY easy to use. 

A different view of the college of building, I really like those green frames around the windows

A straight shot from the middle of the road – shadows lifted in LIGHTROOM, but other than that very little processing

Indigo again – from the safety of the pavement this time! I saw this fella walking across the road – as the lights turned green, he started to run, so had to get him mid-sprint! 

Outside New Dock – this is where I was parked actually, just loved the light reflecting off the top window.

It’s 6 shots HDR – 2 sets of 3 – made by shifting the 17mm lens up to get the building tops.

Indigo from the other side – this is the view most will see of it, it’s at the crossing which goes to Crown Point Retail Park. The road to the left heads into town, so most traffic heads down there. You can see more of the building from this side, the overhang and the glass lower floors. 

Indigo Closeup portrait shot – you can do portrait shots with the tilt shift, just :-

• put the camera into a portrait position,
• roughly compose the image
• get the camera level
• shift till you get the whole building in there
• shoot!

Another New Dock shot – again with a shift to get both the foreground water in, and the tops of the buildings in. 

Loved the light on this one – taken from the pelican crossing with a mother and baby looking on behind me

And finally, a panoramic using the tripod head’s ability to rotate. It’s just a case of start at the left, take a shot – rotate the camera a bit, then take another, then repeat till you get to the end.