Petra Švajger

Petra Švajger is a recent Fashion Design graduate from The Faculty of Design in Ljubljana, Slovenia. While Švajger plans to pursue her masters in graphic design, she currently works as an event photographer. Švajger is a multitalented artist with a distinct quirkiness and edge to her art. Interestingly, she “never really felt like a fashion designer,” noting that her true passions are GIFs, and more recently, cinemagraphs. From digital animation to living photos, Švajger has mastered the art of the short looping video.

How it was made:
Petra loves fashion and most of her cinemagraphs are fashion based. She uses a video recording, and, using image editing software, takes the video frames and makes them into a seamless loop of sequential frames. This is done so that the motion in part of the gif is perceived as a repeating or continued motion, in contrast with the stillness of the rest of the image.

What it deals with:
Much like Jamie and Kevin, she produces fashion based cinemagraphs. However she makes her fashion cinemagraphs look more fine art based because of the way she plays with lighting in the background. Most of her cinemagraphs tend to be in black and white which I think works really well with her subject matter.

How it differs from traditional media:
Gifs have been around for awhile now, and are quite easy to make. Cinemagraphs are a little more complex as there is a lot more editing involved. Cinemagraphs takes the basis of film/photography a traditional art form and brings a modern, interesting light to it. Instead of a mini film with a person stood still as possible, you can edit them to not move and it actually makes it more interesting to look at it.

What equipment, software, approaches, techniques, effects and methods of presentation are used:
Equipment:
  Petra uses cameras, unique lighting and editing software.
Software:
Adobe Premiere and Photoshop
Approaches/Techniques:
  She takes a short video of her subject using a tripod and unique lighting (Flashlights,Fairy lights) to produce footage to use for her cinemagraph. She then cuts the video to how she wants and convert it in to photoshop layers which she can then use in a timeline format to create the gif/cinemagraph. In photoshop she uses multiple touch up tools to make sure the cinemagraph looks pretty and professional.


 

Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg

Cinemagraphs - Living images created by Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg.

Cinemagraphs are still photographs in which minor and repeated movement occurs. They are published in either animated GIF format or as video, and can give the illusion that the viewer is watching a video.

How it was made:
Cinemagraphs are made by taking a series of photographs or a video recording, and, using image editing software, compositing the photographs or the video frames into a seamless loop of sequential frames. This is done so that the motion in part of the gif is perceived as a repeating or continued motion, in contrast with the stillness of the rest of the image.

The term "cinemagraph" was created by U.S. photographers Kevin Burg and Jamie Beck, who used the technique to animate their fashion and news photographs beginning in early 2011.

What it deals with:
Jamie and Kevin's cinemagraphs hold a very unique aspect. They're mesmerising and pretty to look at. They deal with the fashion industry in most of their moving images, taking a pretty model and making the world around her move, which is somewhat a metaphor for her actual life.

How it differs from traditional media:
Gifs have been around for awhile now, and are quite easy to make. Cinemagraphs are a little more complex as there is a lot more editing involved. Cinemagraphs takes the basis of film/photography a traditional art form and brings a modern, interesting light to it. Instead of a mini film with a person stood still as possible, you can edit them to not move and it actually makes it more interesting to look at it.

What equipment, software, approaches, techniques, effects and methods of presentation are used:
Equipment:
Jamie and Kevin use cameras and editing software.
Software:
Adobe Premiere and Photoshop
Approaches/Techniques:
They take a short video if their subject using a tripod and intense lighting (in some cases) to produce footage to use for their cinemagraph. They then cut the video to how they want and convert it in to photoshop layers which they then use in a timeline format to create the gif/cinemagraph. In photoshop they use multiple touch up tools to make sure the cinemagraph looks pretty and professional.

Geoff Ault

Geoff Ault.

Geoff Ault is originally from the Chicago area, he moved to Washington in 1957 where he studied art at Western High School in Georgetown with Leon Berkowitz, a Washington Color Field School artist and teacher.  Later he attended classes at the Corcoran School of Art where he studied photography with Mark Power .

What it deals with:
Geoff' work is a twist of composition, he likes to play with color and try out new ways of creating images.   It is painting to an extent in that he uses brushes, layering and blending.  The only difference is that his canvas and brushes are electronic, not physical.  This allows him to create work that can have various textures, colors that can be subtle or vibrant.  It also allows him to alter images to the point that they are unrecognizable from the original image.  


How it was made:
Some images begin as film photographs taken with low quality cameras that produce blurry, dreamlike images.  He scans the negative into the computer and what is usually a black and white image of something rather mundane can become a colorful abstraction.  Other images are created from objects placed on a flatbed scanner and digitally manipulated with photoshop to produce distorted, unrecognizable images.   A flower can become a landscape, a piece of slashed mat board becomes a seascape.  The possibilities are endless. 

How it differs from traditional media:
Unlike a painting on a canvas or physical art, it has a unique manipulated sense to it. You can tell it was produced digitally by the the texture and visualisation. It only differs from traditional media in the sense that it's digital. The basis is technically the same, you start on a blank canvas and build up layers and texture using different media and brushes, it's just the media and brushes are unrealistic and made on a computer, which is kind of nice because it's a different outlook on painting.

What equipment, software, approaches, techniques, effects and methods of presentation are used:
Equipment:
Geoff uses film camera's, a flatbed scanner and a computer.
 Software:
Adobe Photoshop to do all his digital editing.
Approaches/Techniques:
He takes a traditional technique and mixes it with a modernized form of art. He takes a picture on an old film camera which may be slightly distorted or in focus and then scans it in to his computer. He then digitally manipulates in photoshop using brushes and textures to build up a digital painting on top of his photograph.