Greetings, dear reader! My name is Alexander, I am a photographer with 22 years of experience, and in this article I would like to tell you about an amazing discovery for me in the field of creating photo albums and personal photographs. To be honest, lately there have been a lot of young photographers who take away the client base that I have developed over the years. They set minimum prices, sacrificing quality, which leads to the fact that many customers during a pandemic turn to those who have cheaper, and not those who have better quality.
When I started thinking about how to get back some of my lost customer base, I found an interesting tool that is widely used in America. In Russian, it would be called “Live Photos” or photographs with “augmented reality”. Their meaning lies in the fact that WITHOUT downloading any mobile applications, simply by pointing the smartphone camera at the photo, you can “revive” the photo. That is, in your smartphone, instead of a regular photo, a video will be displayed on the screen (in place of the photo). As a result, a kind of cool effect of enlivening the photo is obtained.
To create such photos without programming and 3D skills, you can use the only free augmented reality designer for photographers web-ar.studio
I have already seen before this reviving photos on the Russian market, which work through mobile applications and are extremely inconvenient, since you need to spend time searching for an application, registering, downloading and uploading certain projects. In addition to a heap of wasted time that your client will need, they will also have to donate space on their phone in order to view the project once. However, I was able to find a solution to these problems and this made me one of the most sought-after and technologically advanced photographers in my city. All my “come to life” photos work by QR-code, without the need to download mobile applications. In addition, in my projects, I can add not only video, as is done in applications, but also many other functionalities to photos: 3D scenes, mini-games, and much more. Also, on the platform I am using, there is access to its own editor, which applications do not have. Here I can add my own loading screen, domain and see analytics for any of the projects. As a result: we managed to return some of the old clients and acquire new ones, even from those who have already used reviving photos before.
I decided to change the approach to creating photo albums, in which there are general photos of the class of students and at the same time to make a short 15-second video of the moment from the photo at the same time. Thus, at the exit I got a photo, when you hover over which, there is a moment of photographing in a video format, for example, how the whole school class waves at the camera and smiles.
The effect is just “Wow!”, Nobody in my city makes such albums and photos so far, and now, in addition to ordinary photos, I propose to make more and these, which arouses great interest in examining my photo samples.
Also for this article, I shot a video in which I show how I animate a photo in just 1 minute – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB2ul26j7Rs, at the end of this video is an example of what the “revival” looks like.
Here is one of my samples that you can see for yourself.
To watch:
1) Open the photo on your computer or laptop monitor.
2) Scan the QR code in the lower right corner through the camera (if you have an iphone or some types of Android) or the built-in QR code scanner app.
3) Point your phone at the photo that you have opened on the monitor.
If you liked my ideas for unusual photos, I will gladly take them for you or your family. Thank you for reading the article to the very end, I was happy to share my experience with you.