For this exercise I have created a series of cinemagraphs to support my current Art Major folio. A set of landscape stills from around my neighbourhood, they represent the space that I inhabit during this period of lockdown, and presents an opportunity to explore areas that have previously gone unnoticed. 

I wanted these cinemagraphs to connect you to the scenes and within the environment, as this series is an otherwise detached view of my environments. I wanted the scenes to become alive at night, exactly the time that we're all closed away due to curfew.

These Cinemagraphs have been created via the combination of still imagery, video material, and photoshop animation. To achieve these final results, I took my long exposure images, captured during the evening hours, and combined them with video of the same subject. I have endeavoured to select images / scenes that have movement, or variation. They have then been taken into photoshop and combined using different blend modes, masking, and in some cases manual animation. Using keyframes I then mapped out the movement of objects and lights within the frame before exporting them as looping Gif's.

I wanted the movement within each image to be subtle, so that it would match with the rest of my series as a very quiet series so I've chosen small parts of the frame, sometimes almost unnoticed to place my video component. I found quite challenging the fact that I could take images in lowlight but to get my video to match the same exposure and colour characteristics, let alone the quality took a lot more work. When compositing these images I was careful as sometimes the resolution difference made my masking very noticeable.

I intend for these cinemagraphs to be exhibited alongside my original static images, adding an additional dimension to my series. I'm not sure of their final form, eg. Projection, or screen, however that will be decided on when we are able to view our exhibition space.