Santa Monica Pier, Los Angeles

When first viewed, this image may look like a photograph of a scaled down model of the Santa Monica Pier in Los Angeles. In fact, this is a photograph of the actual life-size pier. Olivo Barbieri has been photographing from a helicopter and achieving this unique look of surrealism by using a tilt shift lens. This style of photography that Barbieri uses makes the landscape in the photo to appear to have much smaller proportions to human scale. It's as if this boardwalk were a man-made model. I thoroughly enjoy Barbieri's "Model World" photographs that he has taken because they trick the mind. When I first saw this photo, I thought that it was a model until I read about Barbieri's style. It is all very interesting and creative.