Muybridge Derby: Bringing Animal Locomotion Photographs to Life with AI

I’m sure you’ve seen the series of images of a galloping horse by 19th-century English photographer Eadweard Muybridge. As a refresher, here is a GIF animation that shows one of his more famous photo series. <img alt="" src="https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:480/1*M9cdoNj6ZXGSdkDLHCo5dA.gif" style="height:360px; width:480px" /> <a href="https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/work-of-art/horses-gallop-thoroughbred-bay-mare-annie-g-with-male-rider" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Plate Number 626, Gallop</a> by Eadweard Muybridge, Animated GIF by Author And here’s a portrait of Muybridge with an illustration of the apparatus he built to capture the photo series. <img alt="" src="https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:588/0*xe_JtoZWQX75foJB.jpg" style="height:704px; width:256px" /> <img alt="" src="https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1742/1*lB8DoPWjVgfWy9qupB18Fw.png" style="height:717px; width:745px" /> Portrait of Eadweard Muybridge (left) Image from <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Optic_Projection_fig_411.jpg" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Wikimedia</a>, Muybridge’s Apparatus (right), Image from <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Portret_van_Eadweard_Muybridge_Eadweard_Muybridge_(1830,_%2B1904.)_(titel_op_object),_RP-F-2001-7-509-65.jpg" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Wikimedia</a> <h2>Eadweard Muybridge</h2> Muybridge was a nature photographer commissioned by the Governor of California, Leland Stanford, to document his mansion and possessions. Stanford posed an exciting challenge to Muybridge: could he take clear pictures of a galloping horse? <blockquote> 1872 was the year that Muybridge began his zealous involvement with motion photography. He was commissioned by Governor Leland Stanford to photograph the moving gait of his racehorse, Occident. Until this time the gait of a moving horse had been a mystery. When did the feet touch the ground? Did all four feet ever leave the ground at the same time? Painting the feet of the galloping horse had been an unsolved problem for artists. </blockquote> <a href="https://towardsdatascience.com/muybridge-derby-bringing-animal-locomotion-photographs-to-life-with-ai-b1918e6622ec">Learn More</a>