This was the first cinemagraph I ever did. I am pretty proud of how it came out and how it perfectly loops, but that was the most difficult part to accomplish. Since the steam moves erratically, it was hard to find a good place to cut and crossfade it to create a realistic loop.

My first idea for a cinemagraph was to have someone in the foreground sit still as a picture while people walk behind in the background. While this is a good idea, I didn't take the wind into account and would have been more effective if shot inside. No matter what I did, either the people walking behind disappeared momentarily when walking behind the person in the foreground or pieces of hair/shirt would be moving in the wind to make sure that the people walking behind didn't disappear. Overall, this was sort of a fail, but it gave me a better understanding of how to make cinemagraphs.

When looking at inspiration for cinemagraphs, I noticed that many involved flowing or dripping liquid, so I wanted to try it out for myself. I decided to pour water from my water bottle, which I quickly realized was a problem to make into a cinemagraph due to the tilting of my hand and the bottle itself. I still managed to make a pretty convincing cinemagraph, but it still has a lot wrong with it that I needed to improve upon in future attempts. Due to the reflective background, it reflected the movement of the bottle and made it very difficult to make only the water move, ultimately leaving a weird line there (it was either a weird line or a glitchy background). The tip of the bottle also glitches in and out due to the movement. This made me realize just how important a tripod is when recording cinemagraph videos.

This cinemagraph was accomplished by placing a cup down to create ripples and keeping the hands as still as possible. I was inspired by all the cinemagraphs of moving water online and was originally unsure how to create the effect, so through lots of trial and error we finally achieved the movement needed to create the cinemagraph.

We got the idea to create this cinemagraph when I poked my head downstairs to say hello to my friends. We then turned this idea into a cinemagraph by having Allison pointing being the still part and me poking my head out repetitively being the moving looping part.

Wanting to try the flowing water effect again in a smoother way, we decided to try the sink since the water pressure was consistent compared to the bottle needing to move to be poured. It came out so much better than the bottle one and truly seems like the sink is constantly running.