Cinemagraphs - next step photography

It is, in their own words, "something more than a photo but less than a video".

Two artists have created a new way to to record your special moments - pictures with movement.

The 'cinemagraphs' look like still photos but actually feature a subtle area of movement designed to grab your eye and keep you looking. The effect is slightly eerie - but utterly captivating.

In one shot of a crowded square, bodies are frozen in time, but one man quietly turns the pages of his newspaper.

Another photo of a restaurant terrace is brought to life by the reflection of a taxi going past in the window.

And a picture of photographer Jamie Beck, one of the two behind the project, leaps off the screen when her hair starts to blow in a breeze.

Miss Beck has worked with motion graphics artist Kevin Burg to make the cinemagraphs by using GIFs, a type of picture format similar to a JPEG which has been around since the invention of home computers.

Only now with broadband internet are they bringing it to life with a startling effect.

'Our cinemagraphs are a way of adding motion to a still image,' Miss Beck said.

In most cases she shoots the photos and Mr Burg adds on motion-graphics over several hours of painstaking editing.

The more complex ones take an entire day to pull together.

New York-based Miss Beck told The Atlantic magazine: 'There's something magical about a still photograph - a captured moment in time - that can simultaneously exist outside the fraction of a second the shutter captures.

We feel there are many exciting applications for this type of moving image.

There's movement in everything and by capturing that plus the great things about a still photograph you get to experience what a video has to offer without the time commitment a video requires.

She added that sharing websites such as Tumblr have been essential for helping them publish their work and getting them an audience.