A cinemagraph is a fancy name for a gif file. A gif (graphics interchange format) file is another type of image format file one can find in the digital world along with jpg, tif, png among others. That is, the file has the suffix photo.gif compared to photo.jpg, etc. You get the picture ...
We are all likely familiar with gifs. They are these little images or icons that contain some movement and we paste them into our emails, social media posts, text messages, etc. Most of them are silly little things but have some movement which makes them a little more interesting than the static version.
Some photographers use these gifs, or cinemagraphs, as a vehicle to better express their art form. They show a little movement with most of the image static like one would see a normal photograph. Some of the best work I have seen are the cinemagraphs of Armand Dijcks Check out his Elemental Series.
A Cinemagraph simply loops over and over again giving one the impression of continual movement. Normally, a video file contains about 25 to 30 frames every second. A Cinemagraph has a limited number of frames that simply play over and over again.
There are a number of ways to achieve this effect. Because they have become so popular in the social media world, tools have been developed to create them from a static image or from a video. One of my attempts at this has been a combination of a static image and a video. Check out the one below (sorry about the moon's elliptical shape - part of the effects of converting to a small file size)...
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