Tilt-shift technique...

THE DIARY FROM SMH APRIL 29, 2013

Key to technique: A high-up view on a small, small world. Photo: Nathan Kaso
Nathan Kaso clearly took to heart Orson Welles' famous line that a movie production "is the biggest electric train set a boy ever had".

In the handful of stop-motion time-lapse short films the 28-year-old has made, he appears to be lording it over all he surveys - the tourist playgrounds of Circular Quay, The Rocks and Bondi in his Sydney-set Toy Boats. His captivating day-in-the-life films look like they were made using Lego and miniatures, only they weren't. That really is the city on screen, and those tiny model railway people, well, they're real, too.

The films were shot using a technique known as tilt-shift, the main characteristic of which is a blurring of the top and bottom of the frame that creates the impression of varied depth of field.

''It tricks the mind into thinking you have shot with miniatures because it's impossible to actually shoot landscape that way,'' Kaso says. ''You need to shoot from high up and with the right sort of perspective to make it look like you've shot with models.''

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Traditionally tilt-shift is an in-camera effect ; in Kaso's case it was achieved after the fact, using Photoshop.

Melbourne-based Kaso spent a week in November shooting sparkling seas and bobbing boats, the balletic in and out of the ferries at the Quay (from Harbour Bridge pylons and Cahill Expressway lookouts), bathers at Bondi and crowds on the last day of Sculpture by the Sea.

The films, with their toy figurine-like cast, are a hobby project for Kaso, who works as a designer and illustrator.

''One of the things I like about photography is it gets me away from the computer. I love the outdoors, being in nature.''

Karl Quinn

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/the-diary/lilliputian-sydney-is-all-for-real-20130428-2imwz.html#ixzz2Ro1bS9ky