I’ve been dabbling a bit with Cinamagram this week. It’s a free app that lets you create Cinamagraphs. Their tagline is “Create a stunning hybrid between photo and video” and it does a nice job at letting you create something that does just that. It’s done a nice job of getting me to see my walk to and from work a little bit differently.
You record short 2 second videos and then draw a mask on the photo to identify the part of the image you want to be animated. The rest of the image stays still. The end product is an animated gif. For example, in the image above I set it to keep counting down at the end of the walk signal. You’re always just about to have the light switch to red.
It’s an interesting process. It get’s you to see spaces in different ways. It’s fun to look for things that can run as repetitive motions in scenes where a lot of other action is held still. For example, getting things like the car in the image to blur from motion while keeping the lightly flapping flag going.
It’s tricky to get them to pan out exactly right. But it is a lot of fun to try and find things that you can play back and forth with.
By focusing in on very little movements, like rustling leaves or the lights on a police car you end up with things that have this strange quality of being something between a photography and video. Aside from being neat, it’s rather easy.
I think it’s always fun to get a new toy like this that prompts you to look around at the world a little differently, to try and see with a different eye.
I’ve only seen cinemagraphs made by the fashion blogger who writes From Me To You before, so it’s exciting to see them from another eye. These are lovely! I especially love the one of the man walking through the station.