How-To: Cinemagraphs

While animated GIFs have been around for a while, they’ve recently been adopted by photographers to add small amounts of looping motion to otherwise still images. It’s no wonder they’ve been seen all over the web lately, as the result is often a quite entrancing moving photograph. If you’re interested in making your own, Photojojo offers a detailed write up of how to make these so-called “cinemagraphs,” from planning the right motion to the final assembly in Photoshop. And if you’re looking for a little inspiration, check out the work of photographer Jamie Beck and motion graphics designer Kevin Burg, who are responsible for popularizing this trend. According to Jamie, “There’s something magical about a still photograph—a captured moment in time—that can simultaneously exist outside the fraction of a second the shutter captures.”