I’ve always found the idea of tilt-shift photography appealing, but I’ll never be able to justify the lens required. A combination of photoshop filters can have a similar effect, but I’ve never found the time, but I am enjoying playing with the simple but efficient Tilt Shift Maker, an online tool which does the processing work for you.  For those who don’t know tilt-shift photography (or, more specifically, tilt-shift miniature simulation) can make a photograph look like the contents are miniature-sized rather than realistic thanks to different depths of field.  Here are two examples of tilt-shifting my own photos:

[1] Luxury Boats docked along Venice:

[2] Pier 17 in New York:

I’ve got a little way to go until I’m happy with these – I should really be using photoshop to refine them – but if you’re interested check out the example gallery at Tilt Shift Maker (all photos under a Creative Commons license) or the rapidly-growing Tilt Shift Maker Flickr group.