Mexico » Travel Photography » Tilt-Shift Study in Mazatlán

Hola amigos! As we transition from our six-week road trip, to our next six-months house-sitting, this is a perfect opportunity to both reflect back and look ahead. Spoiler alert: Mexico is incredible, and has made a lovely backdrop for practicing some new techniques!

I don’t really have many words to describe our long road trip through eleven Mexican states, but some words that come to mind are: Beautiful; Historical; Inspiring; Mysterious; Refreshing; Exhilarating; Delicious; and Exhausting.

We started in Puerto Vallarta (Jalisco), then visited Mazatlàn (Sinaloa) for Carnaval, followed by the states of Durango, Zacatecas, Guanajuato, Hidalgo, Querétaro, the State of Mexico, Tlaxcala, Puebla, and Morelos. We visited seven ‘Pueblos Màgicos’, which are a collection of cities considered to be particularly culturally significant: Zombrerete, Bernal, Mineral del Monte, Zempoala, Cholula, Atlixco, Tepoztlán. And we got to explore many ancient pyramids and archeological sites: El Cerrito, Tula complex, Teotihuacán complex, The Great Pyramid of Cholula (Tlachihualtepetl), the Underground Tunnels of Puebla, and Xochicalco complex.

Two things I gained from the trip: 1) a growing love for this big, beautiful country, and 2) over 3,000 photos to sort through… Ha! I’m still deciding what the best way will be to share them, but rest assured, I’ll be sprinkling these travel photos in with my regular posts.

What comes next? We continue our travels via house-sitting! We’ve already booked about six-months of accommodations, in exchange for home, garden, and pet care. I’m confident we’ll be able to book sits throughout the country as long as we like. As I write this, we’ve just started our first one: We’re on a beautiful remote ranch near Aculco, about two hours outside of Mexico City. Complete with chickens, sheep, horses, a kitty, and a sweet dog named Laila, we’re helping the ranchers design their new chicken coops and garden area! After this, we’ll find ourselves in Guanajuato, Oaxaca for three months, back to Puerto Vallarta, then Leòn in the fall. So, the number of photos to sort through continues to grow, rather than shrink 😉

Now, let’s take a look at some photos from my recent tilt-shift test shoots! If you remember from my previous post about the tilt-shift learning process: the dials on the lens allow me to tilt the lens up or down, or shift it left or right, or a combination of two. Adjusting these dials creates different effects in-camera. The “shift” in the tilt-shift lens was initially used primarily in architectural photography, to straighten converging lines, basically giving buildings a friendlier, less distorted perspective. And the “tilt” adjusts the focal plane, which allows the depth of field to be maximized (infinite focus) or minimized (very narrow). Sounds confusing! But it’s actually pretty simple. I’ll share a few images to demonstrate each of these effects:

First, let’s take a look at this street corner in in Mazatlàn’s Centro històrico. For comparison, this first image has the “tilt” and “shift” dials set to “0” so it looks just like any normal 24mm lens.

This is the effect of “shifting” the lens up, which you can see straightens the buildings. This is pretty dramatically shown with the changes to the lamp post and tree on the left-hand side, as well as both buildings.

This is the result when we keep the “shift up” and add the “tilt left”. You can see this causes the building on the right-hand side to go out of focus, and the lamp post on the left-hand side, to go slightly out of focus, drawing our attention to the center building.

For our second example, we’re overlooking the city from the viewpoint of El Faro de Mazatlàn, the highest elevation lighthouse in the Americas. Well worth the hike! Again, this first image looks just like any normal 24mm lens. You can see the cityscape appears much like our eyes would see, and the focus falls off normally as the distance becomes greater. I wouldn’t say there’s any real specific focal-point of the image, as the wide view of the city is all fairly equally interesting.

This is the effect of “tilting” the lens to the right, which you can see creates a sliver of focus, straight up and down. I chose to focus on the cliffs and some of the tall skyscrapers in the city. This is very different from what our eyes would see.

Keeping the same “tilt right”, this image focuses on the sailboats and cruise ship, bringing our attention to the maritime area and activity on the water. You can see how this can be fun and useful, to draw the viewer to a certain part of the image.

This time, I’ve moved the “tilt” sliver of focus to the left-hand side. This keeps our focus on the sailboats and cruise ship, but captures less of the city, and more of the Stone Island jetty (Isla de la Piedra) and the Sea of Cortès.

For our third example, we’re standing in front of the Mazatlàn Cathedral (Catedral Basílica de la Inmaculada Concepción), a baroque-revival style building from 1856. Again, this first image looks just like any normal 24mm lens with no fancy tricks. There was a lot of activity in front of the church, so I tried to add some interest to the blue skies by using this greenery as a frame.

Here we’ve “shifted” the lens up, which straightens the converging lines.

Here we’ve kept the “shift up” and added the “tilt left”. You can see this causes the right-hand tower to subtly fall out of focus. Not really an effect you’d want for traditional architecture photography, however, it’s just not possible to do this with a regular lens! Which makes it exciting albeit a little unusual.

We can exaggerate the effect, by changing our vantage point, and photographing the cathedral from an angle, as opposed to straight-on. The following two photos are “tilted up” and “tilted up + shifted left”.

Lastly, for our fourth example, we’re in a hot air balloon flying high above the Teotihuacàn Pyramid Complex. Our subjects are the Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon. I’m so thankful that Evan encouraged me to have both of my cameras ready to fire, because the day was a little windy, so our balloon was flying rather than floating. The following two photos are “normal” and “shifted left”. While I like them both, you can see the different results.

The “normal” view draws our eyes to the pyramids, or perhaps the little hot air balloon in the lower right, then lets us explore all the little interesting shapes and details created by the city of San Juan Teotihuacàn encroaching from all directions.

By using the “shift” effect, we restrict the view to the sliver of focus which I alllllmost got centered on both the Pyramid of the Sun and the suspicious pyramid-shaped mountain in the background. The perfectionist in me almost didn’t share this photo with you, but hey, this is a learning experience!

These two images are an example of moving the “shift” from the bottom of the frame (which would be the right-hand side, if held horizontally) to the top (left-hand side). Do you prefer the focus to be on the hot air balloon, or on the Temple of the Moon?

And just because no tilt-shift practice would be complete without making regular-sized objects look like they’re miniatures…

Here’s a portrait of the Temple of the Moon, taken with both feet safely on the ground. This image is “tilted up + shifted a little left”. I really wish the sliver of focus was lined up perfectly with the center of the stone steps! But I think it ended up being a happy accident, as it could arguably be a stronger photo because more of the tiny people are in focus, including the cute kid in the hat.

You can find more of our travel and house-sitting adventures, here:
Dani & Evan Benton | Benton Homestead | www.bentonhomestead.com
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Mexico » Travel Photography » Tilt-Shift Study in Mazatlán

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