Gallery Pick of the Week
Instead of just showing pretty pictures only, here we have space for contributors to discuss their images every week.
This is a great opportunity to get some insight from the original photographer and the content is entirely open. It could be anything from the personal feeling of the photographer about the image to any photographic techniques or location knowledge he/she would like to share with our visitors.
Gallery Pick of the Week > May 2011
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How to Isolate Your Photography from Others, 30/5/11, Pele Leung As a photographer, you probably have read some articles about taking better (landscape) photographs. In fact, this topic has been written extensively and many articles simply copy the ideas from each others. |
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A Total Experience of Photography, 2/5/11, Pele Leung Designing multimedia slideshow presentations is more about how to convey the idea to audiences and the software techniques being used are relatively less important. |
Pele Leung - How to Isolate Your Photography from Others, 30/5/11
As a photographer, you probably have read some articles about taking better (landscape) photographs. In fact, this topic has been written extensively and many articles simply copy the ideas from each others. So what is the point to write another one now? The driving force behind me of writing such an article again is that I believe there is still some room to fill by changing the approach.
This time I will not try to tell you how to create better photos in the field. Instead I would like to address the issue in a slightly different approach - how to isolate your photography from others. After applying the following guidelines, you will most likely become a better photographer.
- Create originality from orthodoxy
Arguably the quickest way to learn is to see how others create the thing you want to make. While information is almost everywhere on Internet nowadays it is not too hard to find an answer to your question as long as you have time and patience. There is no doubt that you could quickly mirror the "success" of others. However, you will be soon to realise that producing identical work will not take you too far ahead. You will be forgotten shortly when the same kind of work is saturated by others. Therefore, your goal of "copying" should be taken afield by creating originality based on the success of others. The classical example of this technique was fully illustrated by Japanese digital camera manufacturers even though Kodak was actually the original creator of digital photography.
- Keep on creating differences
After the arrival of digital photography, apparently many people are able to produce better photos. Obviously the instant display feature of digital cameras helps to speed up the learning process a lot. If you still employ the traditional way of shooting (landscape) photos, it will become more difficult for you to isolate your photography from many others in similar skill level and style. This is why it is so important to create differences if you want to be one of the leading photographers. Creating differences can be achieved in many ways from choosing unique subjects and techniques and of course the sky is your only limit.
- From generality to expertness
Most photographers have tried various photographic subjects during their life of photography but most professional or master photographers only focus on one photographic area afterwards. Why? Do you think they cannot handle other photographic techniques or subjects? The old saying of "Do one thing only but do it well" is the answer. If you really want your audiences remember you and your work, you have to make yourself special and being an expert of some sort is usually the best way.
- Demonstrate your passion
Can your audiences tell how passionate you are in photography even if you do not say a word to them? This is possible. Your passion to photography cannot be told easily by showing one of your best photos. However, if you can present a comprehensive portfolio of a place or a subject, your audiences would definitely realise how passionate you are to photograph a particular location or theme. Therefore, photography by theme would give you a better chance to isolate your work from others. Remember, regardless of how beautiful a single photo is, it just cannot beat a portfolio with photos complementing each other.
- Show your best only
There are a couple of golden rules in photography: (1) simple is the best and (2) less means more. Honestly everybody takes bad photos but the smart photographers only show their best. This presentation technique always works well. Perhaps it is time for you to cut back the number of photos on display.
Pele Leung - A Total Experience of Photography, 2/5/11
Cape Schanck startrails with foreground lit up by moon light
I am currently conducting a series of photographic presentations of my travels in China. The feedback so far is promising and the multimedia slideshows were particularly popular. There were a lot of questions about the way how I design and package my photos (particularly my ultra panoramic images) together into a total experience of photography.
In fact, the idea of multimedia slideshow presentation is not new to us and there are already more than enough sources of information in software techniques. However, there is hardly any established information in slideshow presentation design. Designing multimedia slideshow presentations is more about how to convey the idea to audiences and the software techniques being used are relatively less important.
However, most slideshows I came across so far were more focusing on some fancy slide transition techniques than the overall design. Some people believe that more animating elements appearing on screen usually means better! Think twice. Although animating still images on screen certainly helps in some senses, overusing or misusing the slide motion technique is actually quite distracting. The balanced use of some fancy techniques is basically an important factor of the overall design.
As expected, music is also an important element in slideshow design. There are a lot of factors to be considered but the most important ones I believe are (a) the appropriateness of type of music used (b) music synchronisation with the slides and (c) music copyright. Obviously most of us are not musicians so this makes the designing process even harder. However, common senses can always be employed in choosing the appropriate musical pieces and making slide transitions according to the musical rhythm. Needless to say, there is no excuse in using music infringing copyright.
Overall, good slideshow design should consider at least the following items:
- Who your audiences are
- The name of slideshow presentation
- The storyline if any
- The choices of photos
- The choice of photo resolution
- The sequence of the slides
- The use of black/white slides as separator
- The use of full screen
- Music selection
- Music synchronisation
- Music editing to fit the slideshow (ie fade in, fade out, crossfading etc)
- The volume of the music
- Music copyright
- The design of the most important slides: the first and last slides (ie the introduction & ending of the whole presentation)
- Appropriate use of animation effects
- Appropriate use of the slide transition effects
- The duration of the presentation
- The credits (the fonts, colours, size of the text used)
- The choice of aspect ratio
- The output file formats (ie .MP4, .MOV, DVD etc)
- The overall smoothness of slideshow to audiences
If you are interested in learning more about multimedia slideshow design and production, I might have a classroom offer for you if there is sufficient demand. To register your interest, please email me at pelel@peleleung.com.