Miniature Magic

While on vacation in St. Martin with J and his family, I spent a lot of time trying out some of the novelty functions of my camera. One of my favorites was called miniature mode. 

Theoretically, this function was supposed to make things look smaller than they really were in comparison with their surroundings. While I did occasionally make that happen, it wasn't always easy to get the camera to pick the correct object to miniaturize, and it didn't always make anything look particularly miniature. However, in its effort to create miniature-ness, the camera did a few interesting things that I really enjoyed. For example, it always blurred out parts of the scene. It also tended to make certain colors really pop and be more vivid. (and really, when you're in the Caribbean, is there anything better than having bright, vivid colors in your photos?) 

It wasn't all sunshine and roses, of course. J was not a big fan of them and pointed out that the blurriness was usually a little "off" from what you might choose to do. While he urged me to delete most of these pictures, I kept them (not out of spite) because I just think they look super cool. Hopefully I won't look back at these someday and cringe...

f/4.5, 1/1250th, ISO 800, 26mm
Our casa. Let's be honest, It's hard for any photo to make this place look bad. 

f/4, 1/40th, ISO 800, 20mm
This is J's least favorite. I think it gives our shower a rustic look. What do you guys think? 

f/32, 1/30th, ISO 100, 35mm
This is probably my favorite...even though it looks like the sunglasses are floating in the air.

f/5.6, 1/3200th, ISO 400, 35mm
See? LOOK AT THAT BLUE. See? Look at the blurriness that's not quite right. 

f/5.6, 1/4000th, ISO 400, 24mm
Actual miniature-ness. And amazing colors! Look at tiny J under the umbrella :)

Interesting fun fact: apparently when you take a photo with your camera phone, it does some tweaks and magic to make it look nice. But then if you go and Instagram it, the camera has to go in and reverse some of what it did so it looks retro. (Additional fun fact: I did not fact check any of the previous statement. But it came from a legit source so it's most likely at least somewhat true.) 

By "miniaturizing" my photos, I'm doing something similar...making my camera un-do some of what it did in order to customize it into something fun. I do know this to be true, since I can see in my viewfinder that the camera took a real shot first. Sure, I'm not going to get a ton of use out of this feature. But I'm sure going to enjoy it when I can.