The Cut is an Enthralling Cross Section Stop Motion Photography Project

Photography Tips

The main reason I am drawn to photography and videography is the fact that you can take any moment in time and stretch or freeze it, allowing you to practically manipulate the world around you with ease. Whether it’s photographing a wave at 1/3200 of a second or a long exposure of a busy street for 30 seconds, a camera can help you make a moment last forever or make forever seem like just a moment. The following video gives me much the same feeling; it’s a stop motion video showing vegetables being cut, one tiny slice at a time. Turn your headphones up and prepare to be impressed:

The video’s author is Carl Pendle, a photographer and videographer whose main subject is food. For this piece, he blended sound and image into one amazing video. Since food photography is his main area of activity, he thought to implement this stop motion idea with fruit and vegetables. The process, as you can probably imagine, was simple, yet time-consuming: each fruit or vegetable had to be cut by just a fraction, photographed, then cut again.

A cross-section of an apple. Even though it’s just an image, the video makes it very dynamic.

Some vegetables look very interesting when animated, and very satisfying when perfectly sliced.

Talking about the project, Pendle says:

“The idea came when I saw the cross section of a tree with the circles and decided to apply it to food. Being a food photographer and filmmaker it fitted well with what I do and I knew some of my clients would like the idea. But it took a long time to execute. Finely slicing loads of fruit and vegetables took over 3 days and with about a 1,000 shots to create what you see here.”

We certainly appreciate the ingenuity behind this video, and Pendle’s hard work!