If you’ve ever found yourself posting a photo in which you’ve masterfully designed your shadow, created asymmetrical balance, and picked up a vibrant color palette only to find it taken by a 20-year-old Walking aimlessly showing superiority down a sidewalk and in complete despair, then this is for you. In this article, I’ll show you how to capture skillfully crafted images and easily stitch them into one stop motion. The artist reached a pact with Insta.
What you will need
To make stop motion look professional, you will only need a few things. First, a tripod. You want the same frame across all the photos. You’ll need to place your camera on a tripod, compose the frame, and lock the frame. Second, you need constant light. Whether you’re using a strobe, LED, or ambient light, you need to make sure your lighting doesn’t change during the shoot. Third, if you’re shooting for Instagram use, I find 1:1 shooting the easiest. You can find this option in your camera settings under “Crop/aspect ratio”. Finally, you’ll need an app to glue the images together. You can use Photoshop or (more on this later) an app called Lifelapse.
Brainstorm and shoot
Stop motion focus on movement. Whether you’re photographing a dancing person, pouring liquid, or soap bubbles, movement is key in this story. Creative thinking. Here are some ideas I created recently, if that helps your mind generate its own creative ideas.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CiOEOcFMO3w/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Once you have your idea, set up your scene. Set up your composition, lock your camera settings and take a picture. Remember that your framing and lighting should be the same. The only factor that changes is movement.
Editing and Stitching
After photographing it, the next step is to get the best photos. Import and edit your images. Because I shoot commercial contracts, I always shoot raw, edit details, and export to JPEG for compositing. Depending on your photo use, your process may look different. You may want to shoot in the “small” JPEG format and apply an action on Import in Lightroom. Whether working from a raw file or a JPEG, the important thing here is that all images are edited the same way. If stop motion is to be used for Instagram, the recommendation is to export to a file size of 1,080 x 1,080 pixels.
Next comes the stitching. For years, I created my stop motions with Photoshop because I felt that all the applications degraded the quality of the photo. It’s been one thing for me to turn my images into stop motion, to be honest, I’m still adapting, but downgrading them completely and then turning them into video is another. We don’t have that. So, for years, I carefully pieced them together using Photoshop. It takes a lot of time and effort. But it allows you to create stop motions to retain all the details and quality of the image. I’ve been doing this arduous process for almost two years. You can see how to do it here:
This may be the best method depending on the usage and expectations of the work. However, an app came out (finally!) that I feel retains the quality of my images and makes the stitching process a lot simpler. This is not a sponsored post and you may have another method that you prefer. This is just what I have found that I like. If you’re using LifeLapse or another app, email the images to your phone and download them to your device. I made a video below to show how to upload and stitch images together.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bagWZDXpXHOLD
As demonstrated in the video, you can easily change the speed and other parameters of the video and export. When exporting, use the video/MP4 option, not the GIF option, if you want a format supported by Instagram.
Stop thinking
I wish we posted our images in a space where the viewer stops scrolling because the use of shadows is creative, the composition is thought-provoking, and the use of negative space is art. Sometimes I feel that being a photographer in today’s society is like trying to serve a glass of vintage Bordeaux to a room of Budweiser drinkers. They just can’t appreciate the intricacies of the craft. But Budweiser is in mining mode, so make it stop. After working on meeting new client requirements, I can even say that I started to have the idea of creating stop motions. I wanted to enhance it by focusing on dramatic imagery and innovative concepts, but I’ve accepted that motion is what my client wants now. I have also integrated animations into my services. If you want to read that article, you can read it here.
On this subject, I would love to know what photographers think about the subject. As far as the push for photographers to create images is gone: are you frustrated with this reorientation to make things moving and flashy? Do you enjoy challenging creative work in new ways? Have you ever tried doing a stop motion? How do you feel about the results? If you’ve never tried it, maybe you can try it as a creative exercise. Labels @OfficialFStoppers and my self so we can see your work! Happy clicking and stitching.
