Leviathan or Lilliputian?

Great photography plays around with our perceptions of big and small. Here are two examples where it’s difficult to tell at first whether or not we’re looking at leviathan or lilliputian objects.

Sam O’Hare’s New York City

This is actually real and big rendering of NYC teeming with life. The illusion of smallness comes from the type of photography treatment. It’s called tilt-shift photography and makes real life look like highly detailed miniatures through the use of blurring techniques and time lapse.

Below, creator Sam O’Hare describes how he managed to achieve the affects in a fascinating tutorial.

Judy Robinson-Cox’s Lilliputian Landscapes

Now this is something fun and quirky. Fine art photographer Judy Robinson-Cox creates playful tabletop dioramas with plastic human figurines in funny and quirky situations. As a landscape she uses objects from her pantry. Butter beans become pebbles on the beach and broccoli becomes lush woodland.

The images invite the viewer to contemplate the beauty in small objects. Along with the creation of real or imagined world from man-made objects. These images were created without any digital manipulation.

This is so cool. You can order her work here either framed or unframed.

The moral of the story is…eat your vegetables so that you can have loads of energy to skate over the top of onions and go cross-country skiing over cauliflowers 🙂