Tilt Shift: First Successful Attempt

So, for this, I took an old picture I had from a trip to Chicago over Winter Break that had the right perspective.

Before

After

I had to crop out the building on the left because it looked a little strange for just a couple stories of it to be in focus, detracting from the overall effect. I really like the way the shop fronts and cars at the light work, I think that came out very well. However, the foreground, or bottom of the picture, is very empty and just... blah. I had tried cropping that out too, but then the street lights in the middle of the picture looked strange cut off at the bottom. In the future, I'll try to make sure my photographs have more going on throughout the entire image.

In the end, I'm pretty happy with the final result. I could certainly use some more practice to get the perfect look, but I think I'm on the right track.

Tutorial used: http://photo.tutsplus.com/tutorials/post-processing/tilt-shift-photoshop/