Archive for December, 2011
Video from still photography . . .
Sunday, December 11th, 2011
Slide shows have been around for a long time. How can someone use a still photograph in a video and see it move? One method in digital slide shows is to “pan” a still image – that is, pan across an enlarged still image by starting at one side of a room, for example, and move your “camera” to the other side of the room as though you were scanning the room with your eyes from one side to another. Another way is to see an element in a photo and to “back away” so as to see the whole image. There are many slide show programs out there which will do this. One thing lacking in these images is depth. If I took a still image of a staircase and “panned” it, it would lack depth. If I took a video camera and panned the same staircase, it would look more real because there would be a perceived foreground (the balusters or stair sticks) and background (back wall), actually appearing to have movement between the foreground and background due to “camera” movement.
A still photograph can’t have that movement – or can it? See the video above, and pay attention to the hamburger plate in relation to the background. This image was a still photo taken during a food shoot for a local restaurant chain, and reworked in both Photoshop CS5.1 Extended and Adobe After Effects CS5.5. As you can see, the meal gets bigger while the background stays the same size, blurs, and appears to move slightly to the right. The plate looks like it is coming toward you and away from the background. This gives the illusion of depth and movement. I have seen this technique in some old sepia photos from bygone eras on TV where a famous Wild West character comes out of an old photo toward you and the “camera” “moves” to the right. This adds a dynamic to a still photo making the subject three-dimensional, and gives the photo a video presence.
-Gary Silverstein
We Shoot
