Tilt/shift photography

You may have seen this remarkable effect in images and video recently, it's become a bit of a fad at the moment. Tilt/shift lenses are primarily used to correct the foreshortening distortion that occurs on some images. You have probably taken a picture of a tall building at some point and noticed its sides seem to converge as it recedes away you. The lense helps reduce this effect by being able to tilt and shift in relation to the image sensor.
However one nice side effect that can also be achieved with these lenses is to make very wide shots appear very close by dramtically blurring near and far parts of the image, as with narrow depth of field achieved with a macro lens. The effect is also often 'faked' with photoshop. This makes our wide scene seem miniaturised. Keep an eye out for it on documentaries and photos.

Original picture made by Flickr user frosted_peppercorn

More pictures at www.tiltshiftphotography.net