Beautiful Stop Motion Short Celebrating Pictures, Made with 80,000 Pictures

Photography News

What do you do when your hard drive becomes full of images? Tens of thousands of images that you would never print, yet that you can’t delete either? Not every image is great. In fact, most of them are far from great. Poor lighting, a blurry subject, too much noise, too many people, not enough depth-of-field. Each image is slightly flawed, yet each one represents a memory or a moment in your life. So what do you do with all of these images? Photographer Gioacchino Petronicce has an answer. Celebrate them:

This beautiful, engrossing, and inspiring little film contains 80,000 images shot over a span of three years. It’s safe to say that Petronicce probably had no intention of using all of these images in a compilation one day, but his experimental afterthought produced an amazing result. These photos were taken from locations such as Paris, Barcelona, and New York City (to name a few) and shot on a Canon 5D Mark III and a Canon 7D. Lenses Petronicce used includes a slew of primes such as the Canon 35mm L, Zeiss 50mm 1.4, Canon 50mm 1.4, Canon 100mm 2.8, and Samyang 85mm 1.4; two zooms, the Tokina 11-16mm and Canon 15-85mm; as well as a Lensbaby.

But it’s not so much about the gear that Petronicce uses as the story that he tells with his photographs. If you want to create compelling images of your own, think about these things during your next shoot:

• What Do You Want Your Viewers to Think? When you take a photo of a young boy at a beach, are you trying to convey a message about the blissful imagination of childhood or the treacherous fear of meeting the ocean for the first time?

• Let Your Light Reflect The Mood. Bright lighting with few shadows is often used for happy, up-beat moments. Contrasty lighting is usually reserved for more moody and dramatic scenes. Which does your photo call for?

• Isolate Your Focus. Who’s the main subject of your image? The old woman in the red dress walking down the street or the young man looking up from his newspaper to notice her? Think about how you can put the focus on one or both. Depth-of-field, lighting, and perspective are all creative tools you can use to shift the focus of your image.

• Are You Going for Subtlety or Obviousness? A photo of a man sitting on the side of the road and crying in the rain would make for an obviously sad image. But why is he sad? Or is he really happy about something in a gloomy situation? People like images that contain emotion, but they also like images that make them think.

What does this image convey to you?

“‘Pictures [s]peak about photography and photographer. Here, the photographer is moving in the space to discover a particular event. When he find[s] it he just push[es] the button and… click !”