Jamie Beck, who blogs at From Me to You, has worked with Kevin Burg to elevate the lowly animated GIF to new heights. As you can see below (and on her blog), it’s quite striking.

They’re calling them cinemagraphs and this interview sheds some more light on the subject, even though they don’t walk us through the process. They do explain that these are still photos being combined and not snippets of video.

The effect definitely reminds of the moving photographs from Harry Potter. Granted, we’re not seeing this in our newspapers, but it has a similar haunting effect. I’ve seen Noah Kalina use a similar effect in some of his short videos. I guess they’re more of the long photograph style. In all of these cases, I find the concept fascinating. Of course, sometimes it can be incredibly creepy.