Photo: From Me To You

It’s part photograph and part film, and it has artists from both mediums excited about the applications.

The cinemagraph, a term coined by photographers Kevin Burg and Jamie Beck, is a still photo that, using image editing software, combines multiple pictures or videos into one fluid moving image. (Think of the newspapers from Harry Potter.)

The effect can be both haunting and beautiful. Whether it’s a model posing while a camera reel flickers her with gold (above), or a man flipping through a newspaper in the middle of New York City, the cinemagraph creates a hypnotic effect where even the smallest motion is amplified purely because of the stillness surrounding it.

“We wanted to tell more of a story than a single still frame photograph, but didn’t want the high maintenance aspect of a video,” Burg and Beck told the Huffington Post. “In preparation for Fashion Week we were trying to figure out a way to show more about what it was like being there, so cinemagraphs were born out of a need to tell a story in a fast digital age.”

And tell a story they did.

The photographers’ work was an immediate success, and pretty soon companies were asking them to shoot cinemagraphs for their marketing campaigns — just check out the ever-flowing beer (for Dogfish Brewery) and the always-glistening tomatoes (for Gilt Taste) below.

Needless to say, the technique has taken off, with photographers around the world putting their own unique spin on the process. Check out a few cinemagraphs from Burg and Beck below, as well as some others from around the web.