We’ve come a long way from the animated Gifs which once plagued the web. Cinemagraphs are quite a step up. The term was coined by fashion photographers Kevin Burg and Jamie Beck. They used the technique to animate their fashion and news photographs in early 2011. The photographs are frames from video which have been manipulated so most of the frame is frozen and only a small part of the frame moves in a perpetual loop. The results are eye catching as the porn industry can attest.

Photographers Burg and Beck have created an interesting body of work with Cinemagraphs. ^[2] The New York Times wrote about their work in Brewing Beer With Dancing Strawberries. ^[3]

Making Cinemagraphs

It’s not terribly hard to do. Russell Brown (www.russellbrown.com) provides a tutorial showing how to make a Cinemagraph with Photoshop CS 5 extended. ^[4]

Cinegif.com ^[5] is website where you can produce a finished Cinemagraph by uploading your video and following the instructions. They give you a free play or you can do 12 of them from your videos for $20.

There are many free options on the web for converting video files to Gifs, but they do not allow the selective animation that is possible with a Cinemagraph.

How To Use Cinemagraphs

The obvious place to use them is on a website. Yours or your client’s. It could be an ad or simply an attention getter. Perhaps a Cinemagraph of you operating a camera on your “About Us” page. The animated part could also be just a smile or a wink.

Cinemagraphs might also work well in emails if the size is kept small. A Cinemagraph could be also a good way to start a video. Instead of just embedding a video from YouTube or Vimeo on your site and allowing only a still frame of the video to be used as the play button, make it a Cinemagraph which links to the video. Now it’s a perpetual moving billboard for the video.