If you choose to read New York Times dance critic Alastair Macaulay's ode to the Statue of Liberty, take a minute to linger on the pictures by Leslye Davis and Catherine Spangler. Click through the three of them. Give that last one a couple of seconds to do its thing.

Notice anything? Davis' and Spangler's images look like still photos at first, but they move like particularly soothing, Zen-like GIFs. Times Culture desk Web editor Julie Bloom explained they're actually short, looped videos, showing the movement of the water, leaves and sky in front of the statue. "They are HTML5 videos, not GIFs. They shot video using a 5DMkII and extracted sequences to look like photographs with a bit of motion. They are supposed to feel like moving photographs. They are looped silently and placed in a slide show player."

They images are part of a summer series in which culture writers discuss their favorite summer images, and more video packages are planned to accompany these essays. The videos are subtle but fascinating, and totally unlike the still images or Web-hosted videos that usually accompany news stories. As The Wall Street Journal public editor Demetria Gallegos tweeted: "It's like a wizarding newspaper." That's when it hit us what these images reminded us of: The Daily Prophet from Harry Potter, of course!

MaCaulay's essay is great too, admiring the statue as a distant dancer in the New York cityscape. Read the story and admire the photos over at The New York Times.

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Adam Martin