autofantasia's photos with the keyword: toys

Another 'nearly ran' for this week's Sunday Challenge , for which we were asked to create a Tilt-Shift image. Not sure if I'm getting any better at this, but I like it regardless of whether it works as a miniature. There's another 4 attempts to be found in the Notes, all taken on the same day.

A 'nearly ran' for this week's Sunday Challenge , for which we were asked to create a Tilt-Shift image. Perhaps best viewed large - no pun intended!

For this week's Sunday Challenge , for which we were asked to create a Tilt-Shift image, something I'd only tried a couple of times before. Essentially, it involves taking a photograph of a real-world scene and then editing it to make it look like a miniature scene, such as you might find in a model railway. As I found out there are several ways to achieve the effect and there's even a website that allows you to tilt-shift your own image. In the end though having looked at several online tutorials I opted to do mine in Photoshop which has a built in tilt-shift effect within the Blur Gallery, albeit I gave the original images a few tweaks before hand to increase the colour saturation and smooth things out. Once I'd decided which route to take and made a few notes to keep me right I quite enjoyed the process and actually ended up with several possible entries for this week's challenge, but I kept returning to this one. Oh, and in case you are wondering this was taken from Level 5 of a multi-storey car park in Darlington. Thankfully, it was completely deserted, but I did get a few strange looks from the office workers in an adjacent building as I leaned over to get my shots! tiltshiftmaker.com

A somewhat later than intended entry for this week's Sunday Challenge . For this we were actually given several subjects to choose from, but in the end I opted to shoot anything to do with pets . This was given as an option because apparently April is National Pet month, or at least it is here in the UK. So, why the tennis ball? Well, our youngest dog Sandy is barking mad when it comes to balls and loves nothing more than going over the nearby fields with me, the plastic launcher and a ball. The trouble is that until recently his eagerness to play ball was costing us a small fortune as none of the ones that you get in the pet shops, which are supposedly intended for such purposes last for any length of time before falling apart. Not sure if it's just him that's too hard on them or if they're simply not fit for purpose, but I've actually seen him destroy one of those balls on a single walk. Anyway, I got to wondering if 'proper' tennis balls would be any good and so a few weeks back we went online and ordered up a set of 6 for £4.99, as opposed to the £2.99 for 3 usually charged for the others. And it has turned out to be a very wise move indeed as nearly a month later and he is still using the first ball. So, if your dog goes through those pet shop balls as quickly as our Sandy then my advice is to try ordering some 'proper' tennis balls like the one pictured. Please view on black for best effect.

Spotted this dinky little pedal car 'parked' up alongside a slightly bigger Zephyr decked out in matching colours. Thought it would make for an amusing shot although I could have done without the sign strapped to its steering wheel.

Kind of like Garfield meets Bagpuss!