PHOTOGRAPHERS. Until recently, if you wanted to experiment with motion photography, you needed special tools and know-how. Now, Google+ allows users to automatically animate a series of still photographs and turn them into ,motion photography.
To celebrate and explore the exciting potential of this new technology, Saatchi Art, the Saatchi Gallery, and Google+ have announced a new prize, the Motion Photography Prize. They are inviting photographers all over the world to participate in a celebration of this new creative art form.
The Motion Photography Prize will recognize works in six categories and will be judged by a panel of forward- thinkers, including film director Baz Luhrmann and artists Shezad Dawood and Cindy Sherman.
Winners will have their works showcased on Saatchi Art, the world’s leading online art gallery for emerging artists. Winners will also be featured in a special exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in London that will open April 16. One overall winner will have the opportunity to go on the trip of a lifetime with a photographer or filmmaker of their choice.
The competition opened for submissions February 5, with the first category of Landscape. A new category will be introduced each week until
“We are very excited to be embracing motion photography as a new art form and are looking forward to seeing how it redefines the creativity of artists and photographers all over the world, ” says Rebecca Wilson, Chief Curator of Saatchi Art.
“We are thrilled to be collaborating with Google+ on an initiative that will provide a global platform for exciting new motion photography and highlight the potential of the very latest technology to encourage creativity,” adds Nigel Hurst, CEO of the Saatchi Gallery.
“If a picture can tell a thousand words, motion photography can tell a whole story. We’re excited about enabling anybody with a smartphone to tell their story in a new creative way,” says Cristian Cussen, Head of Marketing at Google+ EMEA.
This initiative follows in the success of the Google Photography Prize, a collaboration with the Saatchi Gallery in 2012 to find the photography stars of the future, which received nearly 20,000 entries from 148 countries.
Entry Schedule
Entry instructions are posted on the Saatchi Gallery website: www.saatchigallery.com/mpp
Once each category has been announced and is accepting submissions, you can upload 1 motion photograph through your Google+ account. Your photo will need to be in the .GIF format.
If you want Google+ to convert a series of images into a motion photograph for you, you can upload a series of at least five photos (between 5 and 50 still photographs that are no more than 5MB each and in the JPEG format. (Users of the Google+ mobile app can enable Auto Backup, which automatically backs up all the photos you take with your phone in a mobile album.) Google+ will stitch your photos together to create a short animation. If the photos were taken without a tripod, Google+ will stabilize your photos before stitching them.
- Landscape: February 5 – 25
- Category 2: February 12 – March 4
- Category 3: February 19 – March 11
- Category 4: February 26 – March 18
- Category 5: March 5 – March 25
- Category 6: March 12 – April 1
About Saatchi Art
Saatchi Art is a leading online art gallery, connecting people with art and artists they love. Saatchi Art offers a wide selection of paintings, drawings, sculpture and photography in a range of prices. It also provides artists with an expertly curated environment in which to exhibit and sell their work.
About the Saatchi Gallery
The Saatchi Gallery was founded in 1985 with the aim of bringing contemporary art to as wide an audience as possible and make it accessible by providing an innovative platform for emerging artists to show their work. Over the last four years the Saatchi Gallery has hosted ten out of the top 15 most visited exhibitions in London, according to The Art Newspaper’s survey of international museum attendance. Museum Analytics also ranked it among the world’s top three most liked museums on Facebook and Twitter.
About Google+
Google+ will celebrate its third anniversary in June, 2014. The 540 million people and organizations who use Google+ upload 1.5 billion photos every week. Google+ is currently the only platform on the web that is able to analyze uploaded photos, stabilize them and turn them into motion.
LINKS
Details About Motion Photography Prize