Ocean waves are, by definition, in a constant state of motion. They swell, surge, crest, and break, and then ebb into another pulse of water. For a photographer, capturing this process requires impeccable timing—a sense for that moment when a wave will rise, or crash, or form a perfect barrel—so that the image is frozen in time but also captures the essence of movement.
Ray Collins is a master of that moment, and has won awards for his deep, textured photographs of mountainous waves and roiling seascapes.Cinematographer Armand Dijcks had been experimenting with animating splashes of water when he first encountered Collins’s photographs. He wondered if he could show the waves “in motion, but staying in place at the same time,” he says. “The idea was to stretch out the 1/8000th [of a] second during which the image was created into infinity. In a lot of my work, I like to mess with people’s minds a little, and this contrast between a very short time span being stretched infinitely long, and between motion and stillness is a perfect example of that.”
Powered by FlixelAfter he created a rough example to show Collins—“He immediately liked the idea,” he says—Dijcks set to work. The result is a series of moving-yet-still images, known as “cinemagraphs.” This relatively new technique involves manipulating a still image to create looped, recurring motion. The effect can be startling. They’re photographs that move, or videos that refuse resolution.
Named “The Infinite Loop,” his series of cinemagraphs include cliffs that bristle but never collapse, eternal tubes, and rising edifices of water.
Atlas Obscura spoke with Dijcks about the particular challenges of water and the benefits of collaboration.You usually start with a few seconds of video footage. You then create a mask that reveals the motion only in certain parts of the image, with the rest being still. The motion is then looped so that it will continue endlessly. Although it’s possible to do the masking and looping in Photoshop, I prefer to use a dedicated application, called Flixel Cinemagraph Pro, that speeds up the whole process significantly. But you don’t necessarily have to start with regular video. You can also use time lapse footage, or, as in case of my wave cinemagraphs, animated stills. In those cases the process usually becomes a lot more involved, and you might need additional software. In my case, for example, I used After Effects for the…
The post The Hypnotic Allure of Cinemagraphic Waves appeared first on FeedBox.