Autoawesome Breakdown: How to Make Use of the New Autoawesome Motion Feature - May 2013

As of Wednesday 5/15 at Google's Annual I/O, they unleashed a barrage of updates. For a complete list of amazing updates check +Denis Labelle's post. In this post we will discuss a facet of a new feature on Google Plus, AutoAwesome 'motion'. There are some subsets (HDR/Panorama) of the autoawesome category but for now I am only going to focus on the motion portion of this feature.

First, let's discuss a little about what I know and what I don't regarding the motion aspect of autoawesome. This will give you a clear view of what's to come and how I have arrived at the following conclusions:

What I know:
Autoawesome motion works on the following frames with:

• The same background: a static background that doesn't move (or moves ever so slightly)
• A closely shot background shifting by small amounts (up/down, left/right) wherein keeping the bulk    of the frame static and consistent.
• A constant similar shape remains the same yet gets smaller (or perhaps larger) as the frames zoom in/out 

What I don't know:

• The maximum amount of frames an autoawesome image can be
• Why certain frame sequences create motion images vs. panoramas
• Why some (mostly manual upload) images can sometimes take countless hours (in some cases up to 36 hours) to compile, where as the instant uploads can be stitched together in seconds be comparison

Now that we have a basis for this post I can explain why I might be a good candidate to write it. I'm a guy who has loved taking pictures his whole life, time lapse and Panorama shots have always been some of my favorites, except I have done them the old fashion way. I take a zillion shots and then manual parse them together. I literally have several shots hanging in my house taken in Jackson Hole in 1994 that I took w/a point and shoot camera. I developed the film, cut the pictures, taped them together, framed them and hung them up on my walls.

What makes this whole thing much easier now is this feature they call autoawesome. In addition to that I have just discovered that the piece of technology (My Samsung Galaxy S3) I've been using as a smartphone has the ability to drop some seriously quality shots on people. This smartphone helps deliver more portability and convenience to photography b/c that can literally be your only piece of equipment, if you so choose.  If you do so choose, please make sure to turn on the "auto back-up" (aka instant upload) under your settings on your phone, so that as you take each shot, it automatically uploads your shots into your photos on G+, and don't worry they aren't auto-shared. It's a great way to shoot a bunch of different things and see what works. More info found here.

So, I thought it might be of some use to those looking to get a better handle on autoawesome if I wrote a little something on how this supposedly happens. Let me start with a disclaimer, I am merely a guy trying to make this work but before we proceed, let's define what an autoawesome "Motion" image is (as per google here) "If you've taken a series of photos in succession (at least 5), Auto Awesome will stitch these photos together into a repeating short animation." Ok, sounds easy enough. Let's get started.

So, I have 135 autoawesome images, that means that I have at least 675 images to make those 135 motion pictures. Another item to note is that it's a minimum of 5 images needed to stitch an autoawesome image together, that means I have MORE than 675 images b/c I have many w/more than 5 frames per image. Great, I have pictures. Yay for me, but that's not where I am going. I am setting the stage here people, describing what I know, and that, which I do not. Moving right along...Saturday 5/25 I took my son downtown and shot 417 pictures. Sounds like a ton doesn't it? He sure thought it was a TON and wasn't happy that I was not paying 100% attention to him but that's life in the big city. Be that as it may, of those images 400+ images, not 1 turned into a panoramic, and only a handful turned into motion shots (some taken this weekend didn't get autoawesome'd till 36 hours later). Again, this is not an exact science, it's a process in refinement.

Now onto the actual ways of getting an autoawesome image. First, frame setup. This is very important when trying to capture motion in your image. For anyone who doesn't normally take pictures, the concept of a grid in the viewfinder might sound new. Hang on, are there still viewfinders? On some of the Digital Single Lens Reflex cameras there are but let's replace viewfinder w/screen. Pretend your screen is a tic tac toe board.

Using this method it's best to keep all background images w/in this grid the same. If you see a tree in the top right block of the grid, keep it there for every one of the shots you expect to make this image. Minimal variation is suggested in between shots and a tripod would best ensure optimal results. However, back when I took slide film shots carrying a tripod wasn't fun and that was to shoot film. Not shooting film and most people being averse to lugging around all kinds of photo gear, people will mostly shoot w/their phones or small digital cameras. In this case, there should be an option to turn the grid on. If you need digital reminders of what appears where, in each frame as you shoot, you should turn on this feature. So step 1 is to turn auto back-up on via your phone's G+ app settings. Step 2 is to acquire the background however you see fit but make sure it's consistent throughout the series.

Ok, now we have the images uploading to your Google Drive (G+ we'll say) and the background is set. Well what do we want to capture in the foreground? We'll call that step 3. So set up the composition of the frame, which means determine your subject matter and frame it out by looking at the screen of your device. For this example we can use something basic where not much moves besides the a couple things slightly in the shot. We can use this shot of a willow tree blowing in the wind, behind a small pond which is also moving due to wind, clouds moving and lastly there is a highway behind it, so there are moving cars. The majority of the frame is static and remains still but it's only the branches on the tree are moving, the shimmering on the surface of the pond, the clouds moving and the cars driving on the road. Notice how all those things have verbs in front of them, moving branches, shimmering pond, moving clouds and driving cars. Take any of those out and it's just a picture of a willow tree and a couple cars in the background. I took 6 shots and this is the result. Again, it could have just been 1 thing moving but this one is slightly more dynamic and has several things moving.

So above are the 6 frames I used to get the autoawesome image below. You can see there is barely any difference in the frames. If bigger pictures were displayed you would see the different trucks in the background but might not notice much else. Yet the image below seems like there is just enough going on to not be too busy. I think that this is the name of the game here folks. Capture scenes that aren't over filled w/motion but are highlighted by motion that was never before able to be captured. It's not only about the motion, it's about the lack of motion as well. You need both stillness and motion to get the full autoawesome effect. That's the gist of it, but let's take another couple examples b/c I have seen quite a few different kinds of images posted and they all are different.

Quick Summary of Steps:
1) Turn on Auto-Backup (instant upload)
2) Frame the image and keep it consistent throughout the 5+ shots
3) Shoot at least 5 shots that will be auto-uploaded right to G+
4) Sit back, relax and wait for the magic to happen. (not so hard right?)

Let's discuss some random autoawesome images that have been magically stitched together by Google. Rhyme nor reason applies here so again, I will provide examples and discuss how they were shot.
Here are another two examples of the same background yet slightly different foreground images. I shot 75 pictures here in hopes of having a 75 frame autoawesome image count from 1- 50 and go from A - Z. I held the camera steady, put the post-its on a wall and shot the images. First is S-Z and 1-9. The second is 10 - 49. The easy thing to notice is that 1 has single character in the shots and the other has double characters in the shots. Well, that leaves a little to be desired as an explanation. Why didn't A-R show up and what happened to #50? Things again, I don't know, all I can do is show examples, practice, refine and speculate. Here they are:

Here are two other examples that I shot and thought would have been stitched as a panoramic shot. They did not, they autoawesome'd themselves into these types of motion pictures. My hypothesis as to WHY they would have been stitched like this is b/c the frames are actually TOO close together, therefore google thinks that it should be motion and not a long panorama shot. Shooting panoramas in the past, I would shoot a frame, turn, reframe the next portion of the image overlapping the frames only slightly so that there was enough of an overlay to parse the images together without a seam and shoot. Leaving myself w/3-4 frames that connect and create one long master image. Well below is what happened. Not panorama, motion Go Figure.

Here is yet another example by +Demian Farnworth where he captures a trailer park from a certain vantage point. First things first, this image didn't compile right away, it took numerous hours, so many that I assumed it wouldn't compile b/c each frame is too different. That being said, I believe that if you have a constant, Like Desmond does Faraday, as this image does the 2X2 window, than you should be able to capture an image like this. Notice the window is the center focal point of every frame (or at least it appears in every frame, maybe just getting larger each time) & after compilation, it produced this image. So the theme here is to have something that remains constant and either walk towards, or away from it while snapping a frame every few feet or so. The compiler is a computer, so something must remain constant so that it knows it's the same object in a different and separate image. Again, speculation, and I ask (& if you have any thoughts or an answer please share), what else could it be?

That seems to sum up most of the kinds of autoawesome images that there are. I know there might be more but we have covered a static, non moving background, a left/right up/down motion of snapped shots that move across a landscape/cityscape and a constant in the image as the photographer moves. Now I have an image where the foreground is clear and the background moves, see below. I know there has to be something that I am missing but I feel like this really covers most of the bases.

I have a few more parting words here that are on my mind about the potential for autoawesome to shake things up a bit. Similar to Vine w/out sound, these images can evoke a real emotional response from people. Knowing that emotion drives decision making behavior whether in business or personal. There might be ways to use this tool to create new means of content distribution perhaps advertising or some other application in business. To that point, I saw an image that was supposedly 50 frames long. The longest I have so far is 40 (it's the 10 - 49 above). Whatever the case may be, 12 frames per second gives the appearance of motion, so 50 frames is just over 4 seconds of motion picture. 22 more and you have the 6 second clip that vine touts, w/out the sound. That's just a little thing to think about. We can discuss further in the comments but this feature certainly has opened some new doors to things we haven't thought previously possible.

We have seen some examples of autoawesome at work, now it's your turn to start making some autoawesome images. If there are any questions that you might have, please feel free to comment below or  message me directly. If you are interested in autoawesome I would suggest joining the autoawesome community on G+ found here: autoawesome community. I have a ton more images to share and would love to see what you guys come up w/via this new autoawesome feature. So as we part ways today I wish you all the best of luck on your upcoming autoawesome endevours and happy snapping!

Michlin Metals is a Woman Owned Small Business Aerospace Metal and Stainless Steel Distributor. Follow Michlin on Twitter @MichlinMetals, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ or on the Web at www.michlinmetals.com. More on the author on Google+.