Friday, January 10, 2014

Romain Laurent

Photographer. Living and working in New York City, from France. Every week does a loop portrait and posts them on Tumbler here. His portfolio here.


These are gifs. All portraits. Mostly absurd.

It occurs to me you can do this yourself, for a real regular portrait of yourself or your family or pet, for your home, the type that is displayed. 

Imagine having a portrait like this, or something like this, with one element moving and running continuously within one of those electronic frames, as a slideshow sped up.

The cameras today come with sequential firing so you can take several shots in a row for sports and other action shots. That would be helpful for a thing like this.

If you intend something absurd then the subject can move so you have a set of five of the same shot with one single difference. For instance, rotate standing for five separate shots then use all five legs with one body.

In Photoshop, the thing that changes is superimposed upon a single background. Or not. Some setups would not require Photoshop. Looking over Romain Laurent's site, I think, forces you to start thinking of things you can do with your own family. Goofy things that they might like to keep. Large part of the memory recorded is the process of making a recording merely for the purpose of recording something. 

16 comments:

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

I went to his website and had a look around. I liked his stuff. He has a cartoonist's sensibility. I looked for the one where Hitler's eating the watermelon but I couldn't find it. Oh, well.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Deborah seems to have signed off from this blog. I am sorry to see her go. She was one of the saner and more interesting voices. I don't know the reasons for her leaving but I hope they are happy or at least positive ones.

edutcher said...

I know guys like that.

Unknown said...

Well done. The book keeps flipping but you can't see the seams.

deborah said...

ARM, thanks :)

re the GIF pics, didn't Althouse have a post about them? Many, many examples. I looked at them all, and only a very few 'worked' for me.

deborah said...

...'worked' as far as not seeming extraneous to the picture. Not doing it just because you could, etc.

ricpic said...

Fascinating that leftists like ARM, who have brought us a world turned completely upside down, consider themselves to be the arbiters of sanity. Although by being an arbiter ARM commits the sin of judgmentalism. Here come your own thought police, ARM, after YOU.

Laurents' ouvre is clever but pointless. Ya see, ARM, that's the way it's done, flat-out guilt free judgmentalism.

bagoh20 said...

Yaaaay, Deb's here!

I'm very excited, but maybe it's just cause it's FRIDAYYYYYYY!

I'm a little more excited than usual though.

bagoh20 said...

It's also great to see ARM, PHX, and Ritmo (I mean Montana Urban Schmedric) all here again lately too.

deborah said...

Bags!!!!! You are a doll. Is Friday Girlfriend day?

How did anyone come to the conclusion that Ritmo is Schmendric?

bagoh20 said...

Deb, I just love Fridays, but good guess, cause tomorrow morning I do jump in the truck with a dog and hit the road to cross 300 miles of desert, which I'd walk if I had to.

I'm not sure who here started that Schmedric thing, but it just has the perfect ring for Ritmo, who I do love, and treasure here like a lighthouse, always pointing out the wrong direction, so we can stay to the right of it.

deborah said...

Well, whoever knows the logic and background of Schmendric, please advise.

Across desert? Here I had you going north, making me think of the movie Sideways.

Only one dog? Gonna build up to five, one at a time?

Fr Martin Fox said...

Chip:

This reminds me.

The other day, I was reading or thinking about something, and I thought of an animation that would be brilliant. But I had no idea how to do it. Then I thought of you.

But then I thought, well, how do I propose this to Chip? I don't want to pester him.

Then I got distracted by something real and now I have no idea whatsoever what my original idea was.

But I'm telling you, it would have been brilliant!

ricpic said...

Schmendrick: Yiddish for a stupid nobody.

Chip Ahoy said...

Ricpic, granted.

Also, pointless, bronzed baby shoes, pointless photographs of pets you played with now dead. Photographs of playful grandparents before they were old. Regular photographs of children that do not show their faces, so what's the point? Photograph of a some random waterfall once visited, just sitting there reminding you of someplace, utterly pointless.

deborah said...

When people say Ritmo with Schmendrick, I think they're talking about the poster who is named Schmendrick, and that he's Ritmo's sockpuppet.