Staying Animated: How to Embrace the Cinemagraph

There may have been a time when a bold line was drawn between still and video, but as the years pass and technological advancements exceed our expectations of what’s achievable, that line has depleted into near obsolescence. The fascination of hybrid photography—or the creative melding of still and motion—has taken certain photographers to places they could not have guessed existed a decade ago. But the consumer’s hunger for innovation and the photographer’s thirst for survival in an increasingly competitive industry has lead us here.

“We’re in the beginning of the age of screens,” says Giulio Sciorio, a hybrid photographer and educator who capitalizes on this age by creating and teaching others how to make cinemagraphs, or animated portraits. Using short video clips taken with his Panasonic Lumix GH3 and GH4, he makes his cinemagraphs using Flixel’s Cinemagraph Pro for Mac, an app that hit No. 1 on the Mac App Store list of photography apps in over 50 countries within a couple weeks of its release. Sciorio also edits his clips in After Effects and Final Cut.

There is more than one way to create cinemagraphs, which the online world simply calls GIFs. Wedding photographer Jennifer Moher shoots a sequence of stills with her Nikon D4 and 35mm f/1.4 lens, which she then opens in Lightroom, layers the images in Photoshop and saves as a GIF.

Sciorio classifies animated portraits into a few different categories. The home page of his online portfolio features the first, called subject animation: a young woman slowly bursts into laughter, flips her head of curly hair, then seemingly flips it back into place as she composes herself to square one. Subject interaction animation, when the subject interacts with a prop, can be seen in one of Moher’s GIFs (shown in gallery), in which a makeup artist brushes some blush onto a bride’s face. And then there is environmental animation, a repeated action that takes place somewhere in the landscape, such as Moher’s GIF of a bonfire crackling behind some billowing towels drying on a rail. All serve to enhance a moment perhaps best remembered in their own bubble of motion.

“There are times at weddings when I feel a photo just doesn’t seem to provide a proper sense of the feeling at that particular moment,” Moher explains. “The cinemagraph of towels blowing in the summer breeze is one of my favorite examples of this kind of moment. It was such a warm, beautiful night, and the family of the bride and groom had been swimming earlier that day. The cinemagraph sums up so much in one file.”

Though these animated portraits seem to be on another level, they are still rooted in photography, Sciorio insists, so they serve as a logical step for photographers interested in exploring motion. “Photographers need to be photographers. They don’t need to be moviemakers,” Sciorio says. “Animated portraits are just video for photographers.”

Sciorio learned to take the next step for his career the hard way. He went full time with photography in 2005, just a few years shy of the recession. Pushing himself into exploring the more “experimental” forms of photography in 2009 after enduring a six-month drought in employment, Sciorio re-launched his photography business with a new hybrid mindset and cinemagraphic skills in his back pocket.

“When photographers start understanding that motion is nothing but a bunch of still images spliced together, there’s going to be a huge explosion in hybrid,” says Sciorio. This same notion could not be truer for the world of wedding photographers, adds Moher. “A sequence of images is such a compelling way to present a story. They give off this wonderful feeling of energy and excitement that most brides would love to have documented.”

Nothing can replace still images; we can apply our own creativity and imagine what that moment was about. “Cinemagraphs just add a little more time,” Sciorio says. “They add an additional dimension to an already- powerful medium.”

Giulio Sciorio’s Top Tips For a Moving Cinemagraph

1. Start with the concept. Create a strong image first—speak to your vision—and then imagine the possibilities of animation from there.

2. Nail exposure in-camera. If you’re shooting in video, any errors you capture get multiplied tenfold in post since you’re shooting more frames per second.

3. Use a tripod. You’ll need to keep the camera steady so that the motion isn’t too shaky, and depending on the type, your model should be steady, too.

4. Don’t use strobe lighting. You’ll need continuous light, so opt for reflectors, an LED light kit or good old sunlight to illuminate your portrait.

5. Keep it simple. An overly complicated animation means there’s more chance it will look overdone or won’t work at all.

See this story in the Digital Edition.