The First GIF Cinemagraphs?

:
Animations
From 1998-2003
With an Early Casio Camera
by Rick Doble
Animations: Copyright 1998-2003 Rick Doble, All Rights Reserved
Text: Copyright 2014 Rick Doble, All Rights Reserved

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2
INTRODUCTION
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THE FIRST GIF CINEMAGRAPHS?
In 2011 the word cinemagraph was invented by U.S. fashion
photographers Kevin Burg and Jamie Beck for a still picture which
exhibited subtle movement in the GIF animated format. It was a
cross between a still photograph and a short sequence in a film.
Supermodel Coco Rocha observed that "it's more than a photo but
not quite a video".

However, in 1999 through 2003 -- starting more than 10 years
earlier -- I created a number of such images, although the name
for them had not been coined. I believe I was the first person to
create such art works. If that is not the case, I welcome evidence
that someone else invented this form before I did. I also believe I
am the first person do create animated selfies. I was working with
an extremely limited Casio camera (see more about this in the
Background), but it could make these animations quite nicely -- for
the technology of the time.

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I did not use Photoshop. These animations were made from
raw single shots in my early Casio camera that I then
sandwiched together. I did almost nothing to each image,
although I may have cropped some a bit so that they would
sequence properly when animated. I also did not use a tripod
very often, most of these were shot handheld. I am quite used
to handholding, yet since the images were shot handheld, the
stationary parts of the image move just a bit which was my
intention.

I wanted images that pulsed with life. And all of my animations
looped endlessly -- because they were an attempt to depict life
and living moments which are always in motion, but at often at
rest at the same time. As I wrote in the headline of my website
at the time: These animations are not mini-movies but "States
of Being," repeating animations that contain the stuff of life.

.

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In 1998, at this point in my artistic development, I
wanted to take photographs that captured life in all of
its imperfection, its randomness, its constant motion.
Yet I also wanted animations that mixed stillness and
movement. Plus I liked the somewhat rough feel of
these handheld creations, because work with a tripod
often feels frozen and more like stone than flesh. Even
as we sit still things swirl around us. I wanted to grasp
that feeling.

I also wanted to take photos of ordinary everyday
things and situations -- and show how life moved. And I
wanted to create work that was free flowing, unafraid to
try new things, to be expressive and experimental --
see my essay about digital expression that I wrote in
1999 at the end of this eBook. So the animations you
see here are from that period of my work.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS (TOC)

Title Page
Introduction
Cinemagraphs
Doble's Website Text
Cinemagraph-like Animations
Doble's Animations at a French Website Since 2000
Doble Featured Artist for Animations in 1998
Review of Doble's Animations in 1999
Background
Doble's Essay About Digital Expression in 1999
APPENDIX

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Cinemagraphs
Closed gas station at night in fog, 1999.
Used as a cover for PifMagazine.com.
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Changing the marquee at night at a movie
theater, 2000. Candid shot.
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Rain outside a screened window, 1999.
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View of the water and sky on the Ocracoke Ferry, 2001.
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Beaufort NC bridge opening, 1999.
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View of North River, Carteret County NC, 1999.
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The rising sun illuminating our
emergency kerosene lamp, 1999.
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The pool at Whitey's Elberta motel, Wilmington NC, 2000.
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15 Morehead City NC traffic on road and in mirror, 2000.
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Self portrait, 1998.
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Self portrait, sitting over Bogue Sound, NC, 1999.
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Self portrait under fluorescent light, traffic in background, Beaufort NC, 2000.
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Self portrait under neon light, traffic in background, Beaufort NC, 2000.
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Self portrait under neon light, traffic in background, Beaufort NC, 2000.
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(Text from my website where I put all my animations in 2003.)

- States of Being -
These are not mini-movies but repeating animations
that contain the stuff of life.

My small animations are NOT "mini-movies" but an art form that is quite
different. Because they loop and repeat, because the timing is often different
from frame to frame, and because pictures may have been taken at different
intervals (not regular short intervals like film or video), they are more like music
or a pulsing living being.

Animate means " having life " according to the dictionary. Unlike still
photography which deals in two dimensions (x and y axis), these photographic
animations deal in four dimensions (x, y, z axis plus time). Little animations may
achieve what the Cubist and Futurist painters at the beginning of the century
were trying to achieve, that is the ability to see the whole object in space and
time in one work of art. Four dimensions is not just a concept but a reality of
physics. For example Einstein adapted the age-old Pythagorean formula for the
hypotenuse of a triangle to accommodate time as another component.

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From my 2003 Website:
About My Digital Self-Portraits -- Early Selfies?

Painters have been creating self-portraits for years. Some of the most famous paintings
ever created were self portraits such as those of Rembrandt and Van Gogh. However,
photography (until now) has been unable to accomplish this. The photographer had to be
behind the lens to preview the photographic image. In short he or she could not be behind
the lens and in front of the lens at the same time. With the Casio QV-100, the lens can be
rotated in just about any direction (270 degrees). I can point the lens at my face or body and
frame the picture at the same time.

And BTW these self portraits are not an indication that I am an ego-maniac. I have worked
with friends and lovers but found that they often did not have the time or did not like the
unflattering way I would take a portrait. So after a number of years I decided that I am the
most willing model who will do what he is told, will work for nothing and who is always
available even at 4 in the morning. And I never have to worry about whether I can find me.

In all cases I am limited by the length of my arms. This determines the furthest distance I
can move the camera away from my body and also the furthest that I can accurately frame
and judge the picture in the viewfinder.

These pictures were NOT manipulated in graphics program. I used the quirks of the light
sensitive material, and also the way that digital imagery is stored, to achieve most of the
unusual effects. Any enhancements where achieved in a basic " darkroom " processing
program.
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When I began with the Casio, I took a series like this one with my wife. This particular series of
early selfies was shot next to a restaurant neon light. These led to the creation of animations.
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Cinemagraph-like Animations
My wife driving, 2001.
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Self portrait: through my windshield, 1999.
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Self portrait: driving on a back road, 1999.
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Self portrait: driving on a back road, 1999.
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Self portrait: driving through Morehead City NC, 1999.
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North River Bridge, Carteret County NC at sunset, 2000.
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Waiting for the bridge to open at night, Beaufort NC, 2000.
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Car passing by my van mirror, Greenville NC, 2000.
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Car passing by my van mirror, Greenville NC, 2000.
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Self portrait with carnival in the background, 1999.
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Self portrait Atlantic Beach NC boardwalk in the background, 2001.
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Self portrait shadow, 2001.
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Self portrait shadow, 2000.
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37 Guitarist, Wilmington NC, 2000.
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Beach night club, NC, 2003.
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Beach night club, NC, 2003.
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Beach night club, NC, 2003.
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The 4 Elements
According to the Ancient Greeks:
Earth, Air, Fire & Water were the basic elements
A Computer Animated Poem by Rick Doble
shown at the French website ( www.akenaton-docks.fr ) since 2000
& included on a CD-Rom in their book DOC(K)S "un notre web", ISSN DOC(K)S 0396/3004

"Les 4 lments " pome anim par ordinateur
LES QUATRE ELEMENTS: La TERRE, 'AIR, le FEU, l'EAU
Selon les Grecs antiques ceux-ci taient les lments de base dans le monde.
-----------------
L'Air.gif (346KB)
320x202x32 Gif 89a
La Terre.gif (316KB)
240x320x32 Gif 89a
L'Eau.gif (259KB)
240x320x16 Gif 89a
Le Feu.gif (54KB)
320x240x64 Gif 89a
-----------------
(toutes les images animes ont t faites avec un appareil-photo digital de Casio QV-100.)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The French text (above) was translated from the following English text:
Four Gif Animations
by Rick Doble:
THE FOUR ELEMENTS: EARTH, AIR, FIRE, WATER
According to the ancient Greeks these were the basic elements in the world.
(All animated images were made with a Casio QV-100 digital camera.)

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Earth, 1999.
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Air, 1999.
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Fire, 1999.
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Water, 1999.
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Featured Artist
Enculturation Website, Fall 1998
http://enculturation.net/2_1/toc.html

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Animations' Menu Page on Enculturation in 1998
http://www.enculturation.net/2_1/doble/
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Review of Doble's animations on the Enculturation site in 1998
by the Film-Philosophy Journal of London, England
http://www.film-philosophy.com/vol3-1999/n15martin-jones
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BACKGROUND

In 1998 I bought my first digital camera, a Casio QV-100, made by the first
camera maker to put a LCD screen on the back. This monitor showed the
picture that had just been taken. So for the first time I had immediate
feedback, something I had wanted for my previous 30 years with film
photography.

But this camera was quite limited to say the least. With a fixed lens, an
image size of 320x240 if you wanted to store more than a few pictures, and
a maximum size of 640X480 which filled up the storage in a heart beat, an
ISO of about 100 and entirely automatic settings, it was not a professional
camera or even close.

But it was fun, really fun. I realized that I could take a series of still shots,
and then sandwich them into animations. The new tools for making
animations from digital were quite easy and flexible. I deliberately did not try
to take shots in even increments, but rather at key points in the movement. I
had studied animation when I was in graduate school in film, getting my
Masters Degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
therefore I was already familiar with the process.



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So in this manner I made the most of the camera's limitations. The
result was the animations you see in this eBook -- many of
which anticipated cinemagraphs. In fact I believe that these
are perhaps the very first cinemagraphs. They also anticipated
my later work of 'time flow' photographs that drew on the Italian
Futurists around 1910 with the idea of motion over time.

In the early days of the Internet around 2000, these animations
were state of the art. One animation could take a minute or two
to download, for example but then people were dazzled by the
moving image. Here is a warning I had to put on my webpage
about the amount of time it took to load an animation.

NOTE: Animations are big and take a while to load.
Here is a rough rule of thumb:
14.4 modem: 100k takes 60 seconds
28.8 modem: 100k takes 30 seconds
56.6 modem: 100k takes 15 seconds
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IS DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY
THE NEW EXPRESSIVE
VISUAL ART? (1999)
http://rickdoble.net/photoexpress.htm
By Rick Doble

Note: This essay was translated into Italian
more than ten years after it was written.

La Fotografia Digitale
nuova arte visuale espressiva
http://www.cultorweb.com/foto/Exp.html
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APPENDIX

Rick Doble's animations on his website:
http://rickdoble.net/animate/

Explanation of Deleuze concept of the 'time-image'
as mentioned in the FILM-PHILOSOPHY JOURNAL review in 1999:
http://networkologies.wordpress.com/2011/04/29/tips-for-reading-deleuzes-cinema-ii-the-time-
image-towards-a-direct-imaging-of-time/

Full set of links to Doble's work on the French site/publication DOC(K)S in 2000:
http://www.akenaton-docks.fr/DOCKS-datas_f/collect_f/generiqueanim.html
http://www.akenaton-docks.fr/DOCKS-datas_f/collect_f/auteurs_f/D_f/DOBLE_f/doble.html
And the Index page for Doble's computer animated poems on DOC(K)S
http://www.akenaton-docks.fr/DOCKS-
datas_f/collect_f/auteurs_f/D_f/DOBLE_f/anim_f/4elements_f/indexdob.html

Doble's animations were also referenced in 2001 in:
eDIGITALPHOTO, March/April 2001, in a full color page review:
Reviewing the Wild, Wild Web (page 88)
Talking about Doble's animations, the reviewer wrote:
"He sees these animations not as 'mini-movies' but as unique four dimensional art forms. They
loop and repeat, each time with the timing a little different, so he equates them to being more
like music pieces or a pulsing, living being."
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