‘City of Samba’: Rio Carnival in Tilt-Shift Miniature [VIDEO]

The City of Samba, a tilt shift view of Rio Carnival by Keith Loutit and Jarbas Agnelli. (Video)

The World's Biggest Party just got a little smaller with Jarbas Agnelli and Keith Loutit's tilt-shift City of Samba, a view of the Rio de Janeiro Carnival in miniature.

Set to Agnelli's music, Rio and its famous Carnival are seen like never before in this viral sensation.

Loutit, a Sydney photographer and filmmaker, attracted an Internet following with the release of his Bathtub series of short films that transformed both iconic and familiar Sydney scenes into miniature. He's known as one of the world's pioneers in tilt-shift time-lapse photography and in his scaled down and sped up realities, real world subjects become their miniature counterparts.

Loutit's aim is to instill a sense of wonder in the surroundings by challenging people's perceptions of scale and helping the viewer to distance themselves from places they know well.

For his take on Rio Carnival he amassed around 170,000 still shots captured during the 2011 celebration. The trick of lens-tilting creates the illusion that each object is dramatically smaller than it actually is.

While Loutit captures carnival in all its ant-like glory, he begins by framing the city's peculiar geography as a kinetic mix of miniature buildings and toy-like vehicles. We ogle and the feminine curves of Rio's landscape before being thrust into the throes of the Sambadrome.

The Australian photographer is in the midst of documenting the world's great cities, landscapes, and monuments of the ancient world in miniature. His Small Worlds Project is by far his most ambitious to date.

Through Loutit's lens the world seems simple and uncomplicated, the differences between people are reduced, and obstacles seem easily overcome.

Check out his tilted vision of Rio in The City of Samba: