Tuesday 7 May 2013

Jamie Beck

A cinemagraph is an image that contains within itself a living moment that allows a glimpse of time to be experienced and preserved endlessly. Visual artist Kevin Burg began experimenting with the gif format in 2009 but it wasn't until he partnered with photographer Jamie Beck to cover NYFW that cinemagraphs were born. Starting in camera with a still photograph it is then combined with a living moment into the image through the isolated animation of multiple frames. Beck and Burg named the process ' Cinemagraph' for their cinematic quality while maintaining  the principal of a traditional photograph. From the release of cinemagraphs by Beck and Burg cinemagraphs have become well known and people have made new and different cinemagraphs from food to train stations.

At first the viewer assumes that it is just a photograph until further inspection where you notice a moving part of the image. When I first looked at the work of Jamie Beck I was confused and fascinated. This was at the time when I had never seen a cinemagraph and didn't really know about animated GIFs. The first word that came into my head was wow, because his style of work is really unique and was the first person to create cinemagraphs. His work gives off a really good effect and it actually looks like the whole image is still until you notice the moving parts. There is no sound to the image so it makes it harder to work out what is moving and what isn't.
I like that in all of his first cinemagraphs it mainly all had women in as it was to do with the New York Fashion Week. This gave it a connecting link between each cinemagraph and sowed the connection to media and what was happening at the time. Each one tells a story in a different way, maybe the scenes are linked to each individual woman. 
The colours that have been used is normal colours instead of black and white or sepia. This adds to it being a moving moment. The colours make the images pop as you feel like you are there in the photograph experiencing it.Some of the cinemagraphs have been edited by having a soft retro effect applied to them to give them a more cinemagraphic look about them with a grainy film appearance.Beck probably used professional technology and programs to produce his cinemagraphs but the same effect can be easily created in Photoshop by following a step by step guide. The key to a cinemagraph is to keep the camera in a very still position so that it is easy to manipulate the part to keep moving.

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