“Creating a slideshow of wedding images”
Today Its slideshow time! – One of the best parts in my opinion of the whole wedding photography work load! We’ve done the hard work, our images are ready and edited, and now its time to have a little fun as I kick back and upload them to photo to movie a slideshow package from LQ Graphics.
Its a neat little piece of software that has everything you need to create great slideshows. It also renders the slideshow at different outputs for viewing right up to the high quality 1080p for viewing on large plasma and lcd screens.
The first part of the work is to load up the selected song or track into the software. This will determain how many photographs we can have in the slideshow, sometimes if the music is a short track then it means that the overall slideshow is short. I tend to let the bride and groom choose the track. Usually it is song from the wedding night, the first dance. Slideshows are great in that they can evoke good emotions from the song when viewed with the photos. As they are designed for television veiwing and are cut as DVD format they can therefore be watched in high resolution and in a large scale in the comfort of the living room. This is fantastic for letting other family members view your wedding photographs.
The whole slideshow process usually takes me a few hours, The timings and layers in the slideshow are crucial to the finsihed format. I tend to usually make a few scratch copies before I cut the final copy to check on my television. Sometimes the slides can look a little different on my computer monitor than what they look like on my plasma screen in the living room. I also go that one step further and play the finished disc at a friends house on a different television to double check the overal finish before giving it to the client.
I tend to keep the slideshow simple, It would be easy and tempting to use some of the many effects and transitions that the slideshow software has to offer. As the photographs are all different shapes and sizes, some landscape and some portrait in size, I also think about how to mix these accordingly when viewed on the big screen. This is why I favour the feather edge onto a white background so they all look very similar and the feather edge effect blends into a 42″ wide screen plasma quite nicely. The transitions between photos are also kept to a simple blend or wash. Ive seen other slideshows from other wedding photographers get carried away with transitions and it cheapens the overall viewing experience and takes over somewhat from the actual meaning of a slideshow; to view slowly and concentrate on the actual quality of the photographs from your wedding day.
