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Photographing A Town That Never Was – The Meta Picture
- batoure 13y agoI highly suggest going straight to his flicker feed its way better http://www.flickr.com/photos/24796741@N05/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/24796741@N05/
- betadreamer 13y agoThe link is awesome! More photos!! I especially like the Giant Head Oversees Accident.
- mxfh 13y agoThanks for the flickr page. Michael Paul Smith also has a proper Homepage: http://www.visitelginpark.com/ http://www.visitelginpark.com/ Was even featured in NYTimes in 2010: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/automobiles/collectibles/14SCALE.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/automobiles/collectibles/1... Also I feel quit uncomfortable about the OP linking to this, arguably not as annoying as others, meme aggregator page. Anything that categorizes this under funny, images, photos doesn't really care about the content, other than getting inbound links.
- batoure 13y agoyeah the link baiting was why i went out looking for and posted the flickr page
- pizza 13y agoi have somewhat of a curious attraction to deceit -- this is awesome
- coldcode 13y agoHollywood has been doing this forever. It's pretty well done but without any people it's strangely unsatisfying.
- afreak 13y agoSort of it makes me think of a potemkin village except it is not. I think the lack of natural items in his shots minus what is in the background is what helps his images come off as inexplicably real.
- anigbrowl 13y agoHollywood almost completely stopped doing this some time ago thanks to CGI. It's quite hard to find people who can do good miniature work now.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- mandelbulb 13y agoThe occasional selfies were funny :)
- keyle 13y agoWhile most articles on HN are about the riches and the way to the riches... This man lives in a 3 rooms apartment and does magic with his hands. That's a truly enjoyable link. Look at his face in the selfies, he looks happier than most!
- noonespecial 13y agoI envy him. Not like I envy rich people where I wish I could be myself in their situation. I actually wish I could be him.
- melvinmt 13y agoAh, this reminds me of Marwencol, albeit slightly less disturbing.
- Crito 13y agoI am impressed that the effect holds up even after I read that the pictures were of models. Often when you learn the 'trick' to something like this the illusion vanishes, but with these pictures that doesn't seem to really happen. The road surfaces seem an bit uniform (though the odd oil slick or damp spot helps a lot) but otherwise these seem to be solidly past the uncanny valley for me.
- astrieanna 13y agoFor that reason (roads being too smooth), the snowy ones were the most convincing to me.
- MrKristopher 13y agoIt's like Inception - you have to look at the ground to realize it's a dream
- whyenot 13y agoUnfortunately, for me, I noticed that none of the cars (apparently) driving on the road had any people in them. It really sticks out to me, where are the people? I love his work, though, but it's like looking at pictures of that town near Chernobyl where all the people suddenly left, leaving all their belongings behind.
- yeukhon 13y agoIt's amazing how before I saw the miniature models my brain (pattern recognition) skipped the full detail. Once I saw the models I started to notice how wheels were perfect, the houses started to look a little unreal. Also, filter does disguise flaws.
- kimonos 13y agoWow! The photos are amazing! Two thumbs up!
- devsatish 13y agoAwesome. I want to take a stroll in that town/bygone era.
- pg 13y agoThe cars are too clean. The pictures would look even more realistic if he sprayed them with dust.
- bane 13y agoand where the sidewalk meets the road surface isn't quite right.
- Crito 13y agoThe way I see it is that he has convincingly portrayed staged photographs of real show cars. In other words it looks like somebody took some nice cars and cleaned them up really nice to be photographed. Weathering definitely is a great way to add to the realism though. Adam Savage (mythbusters guy) has some great videos on Tested of using various weathering techniques to make props look incredibly convincing: http://www.tested.com/art/makers/453823-one-day-builds-adam-savage-demonstrates-weathering-tricks/ http://www.tested.com/art/makers/453823-one-day-builds-adam-...
- vacri 13y agoThe cars are too empty. Making people is hard, but you only need to make a portion of them to be visible behind a car window, and it would really enhance the effect. No more ghost-driven cars in the middle of the road. The dreamlike quality for me is the lack of life; the sterility. Fantastic photos though, and they do really work when it's reasonable to see no humans in shot.
- Theodores 13y agoThese pictures are fantastic as far as accomplishment is concerned, it seems that in models it is the same as 3D in that it is the lighting that makes things 'real'. That is not to overlook the model making it is just that lighting, including shadows, is what matters rather than detail to make a scene convincing. I like people in a scene and I would like to see what could be done in this aspect, to 'comp' people dressed in period attire on the streets and behind those windscreens. As soon as you have people you have a story rather than a mere scene. Lighting matters again and one could take three pictures - the full picture with foreground set, picture minus the foreground set, picture minus foreground set and pedestrians. Pop the layers into Photoshop and, a few layer mask edits later a full scene with people in it. I must say that a million plus likes on Facebook is extremely impressive.
- anigbrowl 13y agoMatching the angles and lighting is extremely time-consuming, unfortunately. It's doable of course, but very difficult and I get the impression that this gentleman's goal is not to spend more time in front of the computer, otherwise he could achieve the same results with ray tracing and various image composition tools.
- callmeed 13y agoConversely you can make a real scene look miniature by using a tilt-shift lens (I used to use the Canon 45mm). Vincent Laforet's are some of my favorites: http://agonistica.com/tilt-shift-photography-by-vincent-laforet/ http://agonistica.com/tilt-shift-photography-by-vincent-lafo... (I think what Michael Paul Smith does is much more impressive)
- devb 13y agoIt's funny that current TS/PC lenses cost upwards of $2000, but Michael Paul Smith stated that he has to use a cheap Canon Powershot because the cheap lens obscures the details enough to make them believable and the tiny aperture keeps the "real" background enough in focus to keep the scale believable.
- shotwell 13y agoA $2000 tilt-shift or perspective control lens would be inexpensive according to some architectural, or otherwise technical, photographers.
- devb 13y agoSure, you can spend as much as you can possibly imagine on some equipment. Linhof, Cambo, Leaf. Those are more business investments for the majority of people who buy them, in a sense.
- Houshalter 13y agoThis video is pretty cool: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fk9EBOOAYiU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fk9EBOOAYiU
- D9u 13y agoTo me the images are reminiscent of old Godzilla movies, etc...
- WildUtah 13y agoBeautiful pictures. They're even more impressive once you see the illusion. Even the fake greenery and curb and gutter seams are still hard to pick out even when you know they're there. And the lighting is excellent. But the look -- aside from car styling -- isn't a matter of charm and innocence. It's a way of life that has been outlawed in America. The mix of residential and commercial land use is illegal in almost all American communities, especially at the scale pictured. A few big cities still permit residential over commercial but whatever is left in most of America is grandfathered. If it's taken down, you can't rebuild it. In fact, my whole neighborhood is like that; if an earthquake hit, not one 1920s American railroad suburb bungalow on my block would meet zoning to be rebuilt. Also, almost none of those commercial establishments has parking in front and surrounding it. The minimum requirements in almost all of America is about double as much space for parking as for all building interior space. Floor area ratios and landscape buffers usually require even more space around parking lots because they're so ugly. Today, even the shots with parking wouldn't have nearly enough and almost all the commercial buildings would be illegal. I don't see any of the residential buildings with the 2-3 independent parking spots usually required, either. Most of them -- for the sake of charm -- don't have any off street parking. Also, driveways usually can't abut the property line, so the garage has to dominate the front of the house, creating a snout house effect and eliminating the friendly front porches. Part of the appeal of these scenes is evoking an America that has been outlawed in pursuit of faster roads and free parking. The grace and community of neighborhoods, the diversity of age and social class, and affordability have been part of the cost. Certainly this is not the first time reversing those mistakes has made a scene prettier. [0] [0]http://www.humantransit.org/2013/05/how-sim-city-greenwashes-parking.html http://www.humantransit.org/2013/05/how-sim-city-greenwashes...
- devb 13y agoYou would really like Geography of Nowhere by James Kunstler, if you haven't read it already. http://kunstler.com/books/the-geography-of-nowhere/ http://kunstler.com/books/the-geography-of-nowhere/ Many small cities (including Jersey City, my home) will not allow commercial businesses to be built without residential above it, at least in downtown commercial districts.
- wtvanhest 13y ago
- chunger 13y agoRobbie the Robot even makes an appearance!
- ido 13y agoVery impressive photos! Although I must say that other than the old cars it just looks like a fairly boring suburb to me (not american, maybe that's part of the reason).
- aryehhoffman 13y agoOne of the most fabulous things I've seen for a long time. Really amazing!
- agumonkey 13y agoWhen I was into 3d modeling/rendering I struggled to make anything look real. This guy could write books about lighting.