chapter 313

Photo Essay

5/12/2013

seeing is believing, and telling a story

link to My Clifton Park Photo Club Essay slideshow (2.5 min)

I created this slideshow from screen captures of what I considered the best club photos from the last 8 months meetings. Had originally excluded my photos from consideration but then finally included 7 because it just wouldn't seem like my slideshow without them. My intention here was to illustrate to club members different ways to publish digital photography other than the printing method that they heavily favor. A large print is beautiful and output on a small monitor has a dumbing down effect from their high quality photographic gear. Yet, a wider distribution is available via the internet and this format can make a nice presentation for some subjects. I may also give a presentation to simply share this photo essay technique as well as this web page / chapter / blog method.

Everyone should become more digital compliant. Side note: my doctor asked me if I was familiar with the digital examination and I thought he had a digital meter of some sort. Wrong.

techie:    I wanted a free and very good pan and zoom effects software program which I found in the decade old Microsoft Photo Story 3 for Win XP (works on newer platforms too). There are many software programs which will create similar products, but this one is easy and gives good control of the individual frames. Output up to 1024 x 768 pixels [4:3 aspect ratio] in concise wmv windows media video file. I favor keeping length of video to under 3 minutes in keeping with attention spans. Generally a six second slide duration seems to be appropriate with variable pan and zoom directions at a slow rate. That translates to about 25 slides. Added their included copyright free canned Amadeus music but then instead chose the Youtube classical minuet. Playback from the free and commonly available Youtube site through desktop browser with their Adobe Flash or a mobile device's HTML5 allows 720p HD quality viewing with smooth playback (progressive scan of 720 horizontal lines).  

My favorite example is still Fly Fishing Gals , although music copyright protection usually kills this example of secondary creativity.

Power Point Slideshows via MS Office are made into beautiful higher quality displays eg Wonderful World of Images but they are not compatible on mobile devices. A wide array of subject content is available from the 1890s to WW2 to beautiful modern photography but public distribution can be limited and clunky. Slideshare purports to be able to convert pps into mobile compatible formats but there are proprietary restrictions.

NYTimes very cool slide shows.

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