This is a guest post from Sarah Ginn.
Hello all creative people out there! In this blog post I’m going to show you the creation of lenticular business cards and the images that are suitable for this process.
My main job is event photography in nightclubs; it’s a great job! So for this project I wanted to capture the movement and energy of an event by making a moving lenticular “Pocket Party.” This could then be given out to clients for their general amusement rather than just having my contact details on a plain business card. It’s sort of like a mini dose of fun in your wallet. Apparently these cards also look great if you’re drunk…according to my clients…you can see my whole set here:
So I took two images (taken one after the other). I tend to shoot off a whole load of shots when I work so the trick is to pick two images that create movement and that are taken from exactly the same position.
Here’s an example of images I have used above. This is a guy called Artwork and he’s doing his whole DJ thing below.
If you shoot multiple images with a high shutter speed in a few seconds this can be achieved easily without a tripod. However, these images must be quite similar in contrast. For instance you don’t want a dark tone on one image that flips to …
… a very light tone on the second image, as this creates a heavy ‘ghosting’ effect.
I resized and placed one image on top of the other in Photoshop. You can check the fine positioning of the image by adjusting the layer opacity to 50% (see screenshot below). This enables you to then edit or transform the image and squew, warp etc. So you can tweak the top image in tiny ways to match them up perfectly.
I then copied each layer into a separate file (which by this point the same size and positioning) and just saved the final versions as JPEGS at a big enough resolution to be printed by Snapily.
So not that difficult really! You can then upload the images and create a virtual preview to check the business cards before printing.
I have to say this is one of the best marketing tools I have and I highly recommend them. It’s the one thing that people remember about me. On a final note, the DJ pictured above loved his image so much it has now been made into a larger version (via SnapilyPro with a left to right flip) that takes pride of place in his recording studio…I couldn’t really ask for a greater compliment than that!
Sarah is a London based music photographer specialising in electronic music, has been the in house photographer at Fabric for the last six years and documents various music festivals. Sarah also works with up and coming (and established) record labels in the UK bass music scene such as: Critical Sound, Swamp81, Digital Soundboy and Hessle Audio.