Composite photos made from time-series -

Brazilian photographer Diego Kuffer sez, "Photography only lets you capture instants (even long exposures are only blurred instants). So, I hacked the idea of photography, mixing together many photos of the same scene into a single one, slicing and dicing the images and putting them back together, chronologically. I call the grammar behind it 'chrono cubism.'"

Chrono-Cubism (Thanks, Diego!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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sigismund

yep, same artistic method used by Duchamps for his Nude descending a staircase. Great !!! :)
- Diego_Kuffer
  
  Really cool reference! Thanks!
Anonymous

i like the way this came out! nice work.
robcat2075

A long exposure is not “a blurred instant”, it is truly a stretch of time.

The shutter opens at time A and stays open until until time B, capturing all that happens in between.

If I take a sharp brief-exposure image into PhotoShop and apply the “motion blur” filter, THAT would approach a “blurred instant.”
WombatSam

Fascinating images. I’ve been playing around a little with a similar idea: extending a small part of an image through the time axis. I made this image out of the OKGO “This Too Shall Pass” music video.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/23825685@N00/5143078188/
- Diego_Kuffer
  
  really cool! I Think it must look great printed in a single line.
Lancelot Link

“chrono-cubism”?
Like this?
http://www.timecube.com/
- WombatSam
  
  That site is very… that is… how can I delicately… well, it’s. Um. Gosh.
jjsaul

I like the monkey in the middle.
- Anonymous
  
  Me too! It was a great surprise when I saw it for the first time… I was expecting it to disappear with the movement… but luckily it didn’t!
- Diego_Kuffer
  
  The monkey was a great surprise to me. I didn’t expect it to appear, because of all the movement going on. I am really happy that it did show up!
jfrancis

If he hacks the blocks a lot finer he will have recreated the algorithm often used to make motion blur in computer animation.

Then he will be back to his blurry instant again — if that’s how he wants to think of motion blur.
Anonymous

I am really happy that you liked the pictures!
Anonymous

Keyboard buttons only let you capture characters (even long button presses are only repeated characters). So, I hacked the idea of button pressing, mixing together many keys from the same keyboard into a single text field, slicing and dicing the characters and putting them back together, chronologically. I call the grammar behind it ‘chrono typing.’

(i love the photos, just couldn’t resist…)
Gloria

Hm. To me, Cubism has always incorporated time. Still, sounds cool. I really enjoy the effect on the merry-go-round; good pick for the subject.
guitarchitect

“So, I hacked the idea of photography, mixing together many photos of the same scene into a single one”

When you’re done patting yourself on the back, look up David Hockney’s photomontages. You aren’t “hacking the idea”, you’re pursuing a technique that others have pioneered.

http://tinyurl.com/hockney-photomontage
- Diego_Kuffer
  
  I really like Hockney’s work. But I think that the purpose of his work is different than mine. Also, the techniques might be similar, but are different (he uses collage, I mix the pictures).
  Thanks anyway for the reference.
Anonymous

I was thinking that this could be extended to programmatically follow the action: for each block, simply choose the moment in time at which it is most ‘noisy’.
I suppose you could use the same approach on sound to extract cacophony from conversations.
cleek

i would like to propose a moratorium on the use of the word “hack” and all of its conjugations.
- erg79
  
  I second this motion.
- Art
  
  @#13.
  
  Here. Here! Got a few more for the moratorium, too.
Anonymous

I think that would be more like Chrono Impressionism…
Anonymous

Love the idea. the reduction of time into a single image is very cubist, but also reminiscent of Marey.

The blocky nature of the image reminds me of http://www.pixel-lapse.com
Anonymous

I thought Cubism was already “chrono” – as in ‘Nu Descendant Un Escalier’?
airshowfan

Neat!

Like most people, I have seen a few photo montages where different areas of the picture are exposed at different times (such as a moving object shown many times, thus showing its trajectory… or a landscape split into columns, each column shot at a different time of year, green vs fall-colors vs snowy) but not in this style. I am now inspired to go out and play with this idea some more, although to be honest the first thing that came to mind was shooting a landscape at different times of day and then mixing the images together in a nonlinear/discontinuous way. I know exactly where I’ll go, too.

In any case… Demais! ParabÃ©ns!
Mike Warot

That’s cute… but isn’t it more fun to make the time warp a little less subtle… for example

http://www.flickr.com/photos/–mike–/5198232631/
This is day and night combined

or perhaps a more traditional fade between images
http://www.flickr.com/photos/–mike–/3175286014/

That’s not the only thing you can do either… you can make synthetic focus images which emulate much larger than practical lenses to get short depth of field… here’s a whole gallery of them
http://www.flickr.com/photos/–mike–/sets/72157619468193919/
Alex Dima

Your photography mix is awesome! I like how it came out!
Anonymous

this article is so cool!! i love the article and yea this website is really interesting. it is my first time going on the internet and i cant believe that they came up with a article as interesting as this.

Composite photos made from time-series - "Chrono-Cubism"

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