I just learned about a photographic technique. A cinemagraph is based on the animated GIF format, but is a far cry from the dancing baloney that gave animated GIFs a bad name in the late 1990s. Cinemagraphs are a combination of still imagery with subtle motion, kind of like the photographs in the Harry Potter movies.
This is not a new technique – the first documented example was for a video game in 2008. The term was coined in 2011 by Kevin Burg and Jamie Beck, who used the technique in their fashion photography. Here’s an example from their website, cinemagraphs.com:
