ClicksyPicsWiggle animations and more!

1864 - Aiken's Landing, Virginia (vicinity). Young girl at Aiken house

I fell in love with this image when I found it about 6 months ago.  Since then, I’ve struggled to imagine what to do with it.  She’s too stern to smile, her hands are fixed and her dress is too complex.  Then I noticed a bit of a wind blur where the ribbon on her dress is, and it occurred to me – the movement can be made primarily in the environment.  I focus too much on the subject when, sometimes, manipulating the environment can give it more of a real feeling.

Some details struck me when working with the full sized image.  She was married, and she was a very hard worker.  She’s young, yet her hands are scarred.  One nail appears to be just growing back in.  Her face shows a hard life, yet her hair and dress are immaculate, despite the windy day.  So I guess because of all these details, it was important to me to get her right.  Seeing things like that make the person more real to me and, hopefully, more real to you as well.

UPDATE – You can now save this TIFF file and open it up in Photoshop (or comparable product), if you would like to pick it apart to see how it works!  Click here to download.

Check out the original here. Find out how these are created here.  Get page updates on Facebook here.

1864 - Aiken's Landing, Virginia (vicinity). Young girl at Aiken house

This is a bit of a spoiler for my next animation, but I wanted to share an illusion I see often making these.  Notice how her dress looks blue, then orange? And the brick looks orange, then blue?  This animation only has one colored frame, the second frame has no color.   It’s just an illusion, the brain filling in the gaps.  Most are not so pronounced because they have more colors.

1900 to 1920 - Trees and shrubs. Old olive trees. (Olea europaea L.).

I was digging around looking for my next project and found this one.  I really love the depth and detail in this picture.  I thought of a few things I could do to animate it, but they would all make him look like he was… frolicking.  And that’s kinda weird.  Plus it would be hard to get it to look right.  But I thought it was worth sharing anyway.

Check out the original here. Find out how these are created here.  Get page updates on Facebook here.

1900-1920. Caption from original, "To Sinai via the Red Sea, Tor, and Wady Hebran. "A burning bush" silleh bush."

I played with fire.

Don’t let your Christmas tree do this.  Go in there and smell it a few times a day or something…

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1900-1920 - Various types, etc. Soudanese (i.e., Sudanese) with his fife.

This image has only a bit of restoration work, it doesn’t need my help.  This is one of those rare images with movement, one photo was taken then another a moment later.

Find out how these are created here.  View the original image here.  Get page updates on Facebook here.

A very cool fire animation:

Check out one of  Violetsunset’s albums with a great vintage collection here.

1900-1920 - The Samaritans of Nablus (Shechhem). Samaritan smoking the narghileh.

I know what you’re thinking…  but he’s probably smoking tobacco.  For a long period in many areas in Europe they were quite a status symbol, and it was common to be photographed with the narghileh (aka hookah).  They would often mix the tobacco with sweets like honey, and sometimes used a bit of rose oil or other liquids to alter the flavor.

It’s important for me in this work to remain respectful.  So many pictures I’ve imagined these people doing some pretty goofy things, but on most, I won’t do it.  I wouldn’t want to see one of my passed on relatives being made to do something silly (even if it would make this website way more popular).  Sometimes the photo is taken in a humorous way, and with those I will be more liberal, because that was the intent when the photo was taken.

I think I’m finally getting the hang of adding more animation within these images.  It was hard to grasp… here you have two frames, left and right.  Within those two frames you may have several areas with movement.  For each movement, it’s done once for the left frame, and then again moved for the right frame – or the animated area would lack wiggle and look wrong.  This way I am able to add more movement outside of the main focal point of the image.  Above, the focal points are his face and the hookah, those are the two places on the image that are most in focus through the wiggle.  This is because they are about the same distance from the camera, and it’s lined up at the points of interest.  But the hand on his lap has a very pronounced wiggle.  I haven’t tried movement that drastic yet, but eventually the right image will come along.

Some of you may be wondering why I use so many photos from the middle east.  This is because there are so many good quality images, dry plate, available from the Library of Congress from that region.  The above image was taken in the American settlement in Jerusalem.  Jerusalem was a place that many wanted to see, so it not only educated, but it sold a lot of stereo cards.  Likewise, Egypt, the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, all of these places have a huge selection.  But the dry plates, many in the collection are of exceptional quality.  With these I can spend less time restoring the images and more time animating.

Find out how these are created here.  View the original image here.  Get page updates on Facebook here.

The Samaritans of Nablus (Shechhem). Old Samaritan high priest.

More practice with fluid motion.

Find out how these are created here.  View the original image here.  Get page updates on Facebook here.

The Vanished Hand has a good variety of history items, photos, poetry, and some great music and links.  Check it out here.

1900-1920 - Around the Dead Sea. North end, showing the buildings.

I hope you’re not getting sick of the wave animations, I’ve been practicing to get them more realistic.  At first I had the fellow in the boat wave, and that just looked cheesy.  So I settled on moving the oar, but then it was boring, so I added the bird.  I think the main problem with this animation is that it’s limited to 6 frames.  I wanted to try to trim them down (I’m sure load time on this site is already a bear for some people), but in this animation it was just too limiting to make for fluid movement.  I guess the best option would be more frames and a smaller size.  I’m not totally pleased with this animation, but I learned a lot!

Find out how these are created here.  View the original image here.  Get page updates on Facebook here.