Photography is complicated enough as it is, but when you add a lens that purposely manipulates the plane of focus or meddles with parallel lines, full comprehension will require a trip to the Physics section of your local bookstore to familiarize yourself with the work of Theodor Scheimpflug. The lenses used to take these photos are highly expensive and the output they produce cannot be used for straight news reportage, yet a handful a sports photographers employ them to capture the visuals of Grand Prix weekends in ways impossible with other equipment. And no, not every tilt-shift photo is a a fake miniature.

Click through for a distorted trip of the past three years of Formula One.

2008 Japanese Grand Prix

Here’s the Red Bull team having fun at Fuji Speedway. This is perhaps the most optically complex photo in our gallery and not only because you are probably spectacularly uninterested in the subjects in the plane of focus.

It’s because the girl’s left cheek also appears to be in focus, yet a blurred field separates it from the Red Bull team members. Physics majors, please explain in the comments.

Photo Credit: Mark Thompson/Getty Images

Kimi Räikkönen, 2009 Monaco Grand Prix

This is classic tilted plane fake miniaturization: the chap in the red car is Kimi Räikkönen, on his way to Ferrari’s only podium finish this year.

Photo Credit: FRED DUFOUR/AFP/Getty Images

Jenson Button, 2009 Turkish Grand Prix

A tilted focus is great for portraiture: photographer Mark Thompson can direct our gaze to Jenson Button’s left eye at the exclusion of everything else. Button here is consulting with his teammates at the 2009 Turkish Grand Prix, before his crushing victory on race day.

Photo Credit: Mark Thompson/Getty Images

Jenson Button, 2009 British Grand Prix

If you tilt your plane of focus to a narrow vertical field, you can isolate a race car with sudden clarity. Jenson Button is seen here during free practice at last weekend’s British Grand Prix, where he lost by a wide margin to Red Bull’s flying Sebastian Vettel.

Photo Credit: FRED DUFOUR/AFP/Getty Images

Felipe Massa, 2007 Monaco Grand Prix

Let’s see some Ferraris: Felipe Massa is seen here sharing a plane of focus with a bunch of yachts in Monaco harbor. He is on his way to finish third behind the twin McLarens of Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton.

Photo Credit: Clive Mason/Getty Images

Michael Schumacher, 2008 German Grand Prix

Ferrari personnel in their red getups make for great photos: here’s Michael Schumacher at last year’s German Grand Prix, looking very excited as he’s sandwiched in between two aesthetic crimson blobs as the sole punk in blue jeans.

Photo Credit: Mark Thompson/Getty Images

Kimi Räikkönen, 2009 Turkish Grand Prix

Ferraris may suck this season, but even parked and hooked up to computers, they look gorgeous. 2007 world champion Kimi Räikkönen is about to go for a practice run at a race he would finish outside the points. Notice how the tilted plane renders everything but Räikkönen’s head and the yellow Scuderia Ferrari badge out of focus.

Photo Credit: Mark Thompson/Getty Images

Kimi Räikkönen, 2007 British Grand Prix

Last Ferrari photo, but look at the fancy British clouds, sharp only where they line up with the starting grid of Silverstone, which photographer Clive Mason chose as his plane of focus. Kimi Räikkönen is seen here in happier times: he is about to qualify second in the 2007 British Grand Prix, a race he would win on his way to claim the 2007 championship.

Photo Credit: Clive Mason/Getty Images

Timo Glock, 2009 Bahrain Grand Prix

This photo captures like no other Mercedes-Benz’s renowned racing manager Alfred Neubauer’s observation that the racing driver is the loneliest creature in the universe. Neubauer invented pit signaling to remedy this, taking his Mercedes-Benz team to a hail of victories over three decades, while photographer Fred Dufour used a tilt lens to show Toyota’s Timo Glock practicing for the 2009 Bahrain Grand Prix.

Photo Credit: FRED DUFOUR/AFP/Getty Images

David Coulthard, 2008 German Grand Prix

It’s Mr. Jawbone right there in his Red Bull, in the waning months of his long career. Wearing a flameproof balaclava, he is a lone white human figure in a scaffolding of wire and carbon fiber suspension parts.

Photo Credit: Mark Thompson/Getty Images

Sebastian Vettel, 2009 Bahrain Grand Prix

Contrary to what you can read on the pit wall, this is David Coulthard’s successor Sebastian Vettel in the Red Bull RB5 car, leaving the pits at the 2009 Bahrain Grand Prix.

Photo Credit: FRED DUFOUR/AFP/Getty Images

Hamilton, Heidfeld, Fisichella and Alonso, 2009 Spanish Grand Prix

You can also use a tilt-shift lens to cut through the clutter of people at a press conference, picking out those that your viewers are probably most interested in: bitter 2007 rivals Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso, shown here at a press conference three days before the 2009 Spanish Grand Prix.

Photo Credit: FRED DUFOUR/AFP/Getty Images

Red Bull’s Guests, 2007 Italian Grand Prix

Like any other photographic technique, a tilted plane of focus can be used to capture gratuitous shots of young women. These blondes are guests of Red Bull at the 2007 Italian Grand Prix and judging solely on appearance, they are hopped up on the team’s signature soft drink.

Photo Credit: Clive Mason/Getty Images

Jenson Button, 2009 British Grand Prix

And we’re back to toy cars. While photographer Fred Dufour probably did not know at the time he took this picture, Jenson Button’s usually dominant Brawn would actually be relegated to toy car status during last weekend’s British Grand Prix, as Red Bull’s upgraded RB5’s stormed the field, taking their second 1–2 victory of the season.

Photo Credit: FRED DUFOUR/AFP/Getty Images

Sebastian Vettel, 2008 German Grand Prix

Black and white? Art! Focusing in a slanted plane on Sebastian Vettel’s face shows just how young Red Bull’s superfast German really is: he was born on July 3, 1987. When this photo was taken, he'd only been old enought to have a beer in America for less than two weeks.

Photo Credit: Mark Thompson/Getty Images

Fernando Alonso, 2009 Monaco Grand Prix

For a final tilted image, here’s one for pure aesthetic awesomeness. Fernando Alonso is taking the Grand Hotel Hairpin of the Monaco street circuit in the Renault during free practice at this year’s grand prix.

Photo Credit: FRED DUFOUR/AFP/Getty Images

Stirling Moss: 1955, 1957

It took the Brits six tries to crack their home grand prix and it took their greatest driver and the car the Germans came back to Formula One with. Held at Aintree, it was the only race of the season where Moss managed to beat his teammate Juan Manuel Fangio, who went on to claim his third world title. As his win came after a pass at the last corner, Moss wondered whether Fangio had let him win, but the Argentine would always say: “No. You were just better than me that day.” British-Argentine relations would, in a few decades, take a turn for the worse.

Moss’s second win came two years later in a Vanwall VW5 shared with Tony Brooks, who is also credited with the victory.

Photo Credit: Daimler Global Media. Moss is driving his Mercedes-Benz W196 to victory at Aintree.

Tony Brooks: 1957

Dr. Brooks—he was a dentist by training—was the first Brit to drive a British car to grand prix victory after World War Two, winning a non-championship race in Syracuse. His win, shared with Stirling Moss, was his first of six victories in Formula One.

Photo Credit: Terry Whalebone. This is the Vanwall VW5 before the start of the 1957 British Grand Prix at Aintree.

Peter Collins: 1958

Collins was an up-and-coming driver at Ferrari, much liked by il Commendatore himself, whom Juan Manuel Fangio passed on the Nürburgring Nordschleife in 1957 to take his last win.

In 1958, driving the Ferrari 246 F1, he took his third and last victory in front of his home crowd at Silverstone. Two weeks later, he returned to the scene of his great battle with Fangio. On lap 11 of the 1958 German Grand Prix, he went over the embankment and hit a tree with his head, dying later that afternoon.

John F. Burns of The New York Times, who saw Collins drive to his last win, has written a heartbreaking report on the fair-haired young man, one of many casualties of the brutal 1958 season.

Collins is shown at the 1957 German Grand Prix in his Ferrari.

Jimmy Clark: 1962–1965, 1967

He was the fastest sheep farmer who has ever lived, the very humble soulmate of Lotus founder Colin Chapman, the man who could not put his head around the fact that everyone else was slower on the track. Chapman had a philosophy of building his Loti light enough to last only the duration of the race but not a second more. When the cars held together, Clark would usually win. When not, he would lose out on races—and championships. He dominated his home grand prix like no other Brit, winning a total of five times at Aintree, Silverstone and Brands Hatch.

Three months before he could defend his 1967 win with the dominant Lotus 49B, he lost control of his car at a Formula Two race at the Hockenheimring, crashed into a tree and died from his injuries.

Photo Credit: Allsport Hulton/Archive. Bette Hill throws her husband Graham a party to celebrate his homecoming from America where he won the Indianapolis 500 in a Ford-Lola. Graham and his son Damon Hill—who would become a British Grand Prix winner, unlike his dad—push reigning World Formula 1 Champion Jim Clark around on a toy tractor.

Jackie Stewart: 1969, 1971

The man who taught James May how to drive fast won his home grand prix twice—both times in cars which were either French or built with French money. Not that it troubled the cool Scot, who would go on to extend both of his home wins into world championships.

Photo Credit: Mark Thompson/Getty Images. Stewart is at the 2003 Canadian Grand Prix with fellow Brit Ozzy Osbourne. No pigeons were harmed in the taking of this photo.

James Hunt: 1977

A Silverstone race, it was a battle between party boy Hunt and his Austrian archnemesis Niki Lauda, who returned phoenix-like from the ashes of his fiery crash on the Nürburgring at the 1976 German Grand Prix.

While Hunt held off Lauda by over 18 seconds in front of his home crowd, he had no chance to defend his 1976 world title, which Lauda would win by a wide margin over Jody Scheckter.

This race also marked the Formula One debut of the turbocharged engine, at this point a comically inept device campaigned by Renault, which would over a few short years come to rule the sport.

Photo Credit: Allsport UK/ALLSPORT. All smiles is Mrs. Hunt, three years before James’s home win. Note Hunt’s totally rock and roll breast patch.

John Watson: 1981

Watson was an F1 driver who later became a sports car racer and a broadcast commentator. His win at Silverstone was the second one of his career. He would win three more GP's before moving on to sports cars.

It was the car he drove which marks this race for history: Watson’s McLaren MP4/1 was the first F1 racer made of carbon fiber. Watson drove the plastic tub to its first victory. The material would take over aluminum for the construction of racing cars in a few months.

Photo Credit: Tony Duffy/Getty Image

Nigel Mansell: 1986, 1987, 1991, 1992

While Colin Chapman watched Jim Clark die, it was the other way around with the mustachioed Mansell: it was only at his third year in F1 when Chapman dropped dead of a heart attack at the age of 54. His relationship with Lotus’s new management soured after that and he moved on to Williams, then Ferrari—where he witnessed Enzo Ferrari die after selecting him as his last driver, in a motorsports career which spanned six decades.

Mansell would return to Williams to drive their high-tech active-everything cars. He won his fourth and last British Grand Prix with the Williams FW14B, one of the best F1 cars ever made, with which he claimed his only world championship.

Photo Credit: DOMINIQUE FAGET/AFP/Getty Images. The other guys pictured here having a killer time at the 1986 Portugese Grand Prix are Ayrton Senna, Alain Prost and Nelson Piquet.

Damon Hill: 1994

His father Graham may be the more famous of the Hills, with his dapper mustache, his six wins at Monaco, his three Formula One world championships and his victories at the Indianapolis 500 and at Le Mans, but he never won the British Grand Prix.

Unlike his son Graham, who won at Silverstone and was then rammed by Michael Schumacher at the last race of the season, denying him the world championship.

Photo Credit: Pascal Rondeau/Allsport. Hill is in his Williams Renault before the Pacific Grand Prix at the TI circuit in Aida, Japan.

Johnny Herbert: 1995

Who’s Johnny Herbert? Why, he raced for a decade in Formula One and won three races, one of them at Silverstone, where duelling championship leaders Schumacher and Hill knocked each other out, allowing the Brit in his Benetton to slip by and claim victory.

Herbert was also on the team which drove the Mazda 787B at Le Mans in 1991, a shrikeing Day-Glo quad-rotor Wankel racer, which still holds the only Le Mans title for Felix Wankel’s wacky invention.

Photo Credit: Mark Thompson/Getty Images. The person you are looking at instead of Johnny Herbert is British model Keeley Hazell.

David Coulthard: 1999, 2000

The man who is to jawbones what Jay Leno is to chins may not be remembered as much of a grand prix winner over his grand total of 15 years in Formula One, but he’s managed to take both Monaco and Silverstone twice. In both of his wins, he was sitting pretty in the sister car to Mika Häkkinen’s championship-winning McLaren.

Photo Credit: Clive Mason/Getty Images. Coulthard is showing his incredible mandible at the 2004 San Marino Grand Prix.

Lewis Hamilton: 2008

Last year’s race was a rain-soaked wacky waltz, notable for Felipe Massa’s numerous 360’s, a high speed track bunny and a beautiful, composed drive by McLaren’s Hamilton, who was yet to face what it’s like to race in an uncompetitive car.

The race was also a sign of things to come with Ross Brawn back in the game: in a snap decision, he outflanked the field on tire tactics to propel Rubens Barrichello to third place in that utter crap Honda My Earth Dream car—notable for always bringing up the rear—which they had already given up development on.

A year later, the tables have turned: Honda is out of Formula One, their 2009 car is powered by a Mercedes-Benz engine and is absolutely pulverizing the opposition. It is the clear favorite to win this year’s race, the last at Silverstone, with Barrichello’s teammate Jenson Button set to become the thirteenth Brit to win at home.

And there may never be a fourteenth, of course.

Photo Credit: Paul Gilham/Getty Images. Hamilton is at a press conference before this year’s British Grand Prix, with Jenson Button looking on.