The Internet has been blowing up over the Cinemagraphs of Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg. Demonstrating that something as old and disparaged as an animated gif can take on new forms, these cinemagraphs are still photographs with a dash of movement: the wind ruffles a dress, a model’s eyes blink and shift, a car passes by.
Calling to mind the shifting eyes in portrait over a gothic fireplace, many of the images feel haunted, making you question for a moment whether you saw what you think you saw.
Fantastic. I’ve been trying this technique. Tripod is essential for one thing, for the static shot, through which the movement takes place. The most effective ones show frozen movement with a touch of movement, as per the newspaper reader above. (Cartier-Bresson with a bit of movement added). The railway station shot could be straight video. The model / hair shot is effective and I expect high end fashion websites to be filled with these amazing images. If you want to recreate high quality images like these, I found a Russell Brown Show video explaining the technique in Russell’s usual perfectionist detail, especially the saving out to Gif settings to retain photo quality. It’s on his website but specific to CS5 extended. In older versions, Import a piece of video to Layers (Photoshop File menu). You can just paint a hole in the master shot, leaving the area you want to move intact. Make that layer the first and watch it in Photoshop Windows menu / Animation. Short video works best. Set to loop forever. I’m hoping to use it for web banners. They still see the static shot if they don’t wait for the animation. Kudos to Jamie Beck for updating the old Gif format in such a stylish manner.