What's a Cinemagraph?

This is the question I had when I got an email from Lara Moore of Katchup, a business that is pretty keen on getting useful info out there for photographers. A while back I posted a cool graphic they produced which is essentially a cheat sheet for photographers.
Now they've done it again with something that may be pretty valuable in the online advertising world. Cinemagraphs are eye catching photos that you can add motion to in desired areas. At least that's my take on it.




Lara was kind enough to put together the following just for me and my readers. Pretty cool!

Cinemagraphs are photos combined with subtle motion on a seamless loop. Although similar to traditional GIFs in many ways, a stronger emphasis is placed on cinemagraphs as a piece of art.

KatchUp have produced an infographic and accompanying guides that cover everything from tips and inspiration, to how you can create your own cinemagraph. Our takeaway tips are:

1. Use a tripod to steady your camera – this will dramatically improve the quality of your cinemagraphs.

2. Frame your scene like you would a photo – a great cinemagraph would also make a great photo.

3. Make sure your loop is smooth – perhaps one of the most difficult but essential parts of making a cinemagraph.

4. Experiment! Don’t be afraid to step away from the common trends you’ll often see.

5. Align your story with your audience’s interest.

6. Less is more – try to trim your footage under 100 frames.

7. Use the right file format – .MP4 is a much less resource intensive format for the web.

Who could it be now...

Not everyone gets to do a photo shoot with Santa, and that's exactly what I got to do recently. My boys were pretty happy about that. My oldest son thinks I'm famous because I did photos of the man with the big white beard. At any rate, It was really cool to shoot this assignment of Gerald Lovett for Arbutus Magazine. Gerald, also known as Grizz, is such a nice guy, even though we spent almost two hours working on this shoot, the time just flew by. Having the cover shot and the centre spread for this issue of Arbutus magazine was icing on the cake.

Grizz rides motorcycles and we had the idea of shooting some photos of him and his bike but his bike was apart in his shop so we decided to do the photos at his friend's house, with a bike that used to belong to Grizz. When Grizz told me the bike was red I was sold on the idea.

I really wanted to focus on capturing the character of Grizz so I spent a bit of time doing some tight headshots.

And this was the setup. Nothing too crazy. A couple lights in softboxes and a fold up backdrop. And of course, my wooden crate - seriously indispensable!

Of course Santa has a workshop! Lucky for me, Grizz's friend had a workshop in his garage!

Hopefully you'll get a chance to read this issue of Arbutus magazine. The story of Grizz is a great piece of writing by Ashley Degraaf - a tear jerker from one friend's account. It's so rewarding to meet people like this and see the story put to print. I'm used to meeting cool people and taking their photos, but the story I hear is usually just heard by me.

www.kurtknock.com

Dance On!

Another year has come and gone and with it some fond memories of projects that allowed me to really push myself as a photographer. One such project was the Adage Dance Studios calendar, which was shot last fall.

This was my second year doing the calendar and I went into it hoping to up my game from the previous year (grace-and-style). This was honestly stressing me out a bit as I knew people had expectations of my work and I had even higher expectations of myself. So to try to get a handle on this, we planned the shoots as best we could, choosing the days of the shoots well in advance, lining up hair and makeup artists and confirming locations. 

One thing we could not plan was the weather which for the most part was pretty reasonable to deal with considering the time of year. Wind and rain were factors but we worked with the elements as best we could and the dancers never complained (for the most part)...

The shot above was actually the final shot for the calendar - the cover shot. And Marina really knocked it out of the park! This was the first shot of the session and I knew it was the one! (Thanks to my dance coaching here I believe, lol!...) There is a behind the scenes photo of me showing Marina the move I wanted her to try floating around out there somewhere on Instagram. Pretty funny! At any rate, it worked and we were all pretty happy. We continued on with a few more poses and locations but this is the one :)

This was the first shoot of the project and I wanted to go big so I (with significant challenges) lined up access to a large rooftop in downtown Duncan. After shooting for a while, and working with a quickly setting sun, I got the shot I was looking for. 

And this is the team who helped make it all happen. A project like this is no one man show! Having a great team makes all the difference.

For this shoot we had a very cold wind working against us. The girls were tough though and made it easy for me to get some nice photos.

For this shoot, the setting sun quickly disappeared behind the clouds and it got dark really quickly! As we were packing up it was seriously dark out, to the point I was wondering how we actually pulled it off. I think I was shooting at around ISO 8000 to get this shot! Crazy...

We went on more road trips this past year. This was from one of our visits to the town of Ladysmith. The old buildings there have so much character. 

And this was from our last road trip to Victoria on a day when we pulled off three calendar photo sessions (after I had two other sessions earlier in the day!). This photo was from our fasted session ever. 20 minutes in total and we had what we wanted. This was a busy tourist attraction so we had to get in and get out quickly. Not to mention I didn't want the girls up on the rocks any longer than necessary! Putting time into scouting the locations really paid off this year as I found some sites I was really happy with.

This was another location on our Victoria road trip day.An old military base with interesting concrete structures to work with. 

And from our same road trip day, but shot back in Duncan, a nice natural scene. I was so lucky to have input on all the details, even the colour and style of the dresses. The ladies did a fantastic job here!

This was one of those shots that just happened. We were walking back after packing up from finishing the shoot (or so we thought) and these stairs were right by our vehicles. We thought we may as well give it a try so we set up again and ended up getting our favourite shot from the session. You just never know!

Our most experienced group of ladies made this shoot in Ladysmith go so smoothly. With only the wind to contend with, I decided to make it work with us and positioned the ladies so when the wind gusted, it would blow there hair in the right direction. 

I had found this nice location last spring and knew then I would have to revisit for a photo shoot. These young ladies did a great job and got to see (my secret) location out near Genoa Bay.

This was quite possibly the most fun photo session of the project. Just after the girls got this shot, we all went in the river. Well, I was already in the river, but they came in and did some more cool shots in the water. We were lucky to shoot this in the early fall when the river was still warm!

Quite possible the closest location to my home, I noticed this when out riding my bike. Just behind a commercial building there's this wild looking area that could be mistaken for an African savannah, and that pretty much set the tone for the shoot. 

Thanks to these young ladies for putting up with me and all the challenges one face when doing these location photo shoots! It's never as easy as one would think...

These are the other people who put a lot of work into this project.

The behind the scenes crew, from left to right:

Olivia Boudreau, owner of Adage Dance Studios, creative coach

Me (Kurt), photo guy

Lisa Rittenhouse, dance coach

Shelby Price, hair

Alisha Irving, makeup

If you look, you'll find more photos from these sessions on my facebook, instagram and flickr pages.

www.kurtknock.com