My first Show it! slideshow: Laguna E-session!

[Philco]

I wasn't really planning to buy the showit web application, only because I was going to hold out for one that I could use to make my own dvd's. Well, the mother of one of my brides attended a wedding recently and she loved the slideshow on the photographers page, so she asked me to do the same thing. I worked the cost into her contract and voila! I now do slideshows!

I have to say that the program is everything it's sold as. It's super, super easy to use and quick. I made this first show with shots from last Sunday evening after exporting full res. jpgs out of Lightroom. I chose most of the zoom in/out points, set a tempo, and let it go. There's a lot of room in the app. to adjust things to a fine point in terms of changing on beats, etc., which I chose not to do. You could really create a work of art if you have the time / inclination.

Anyhow, here's my fist one:
www.defalcophoto.com/slideshow/padilla

The first series could stand some editing down, but I'm happy with the majority of it.

Thanks for looking,

Philip

[spphoto]

The shots are great for the most part (I'll get to C&C in a sec) but it's too long! No one will sit through anything that long (even I barely did). Dropping some of the duplicate photos, or some of the less than perfect poses, or both would cut the time down, but you'll probably still end up with something very long. Time some other slideshows you like to get an idea of how long it should be.

The shots are really good. The few things I have to say are pretty technical and nit picky. First, on the shots where he's leaning against the rock wall and she's leaning against him the light just catches their foreheads. Moving them a little or waiting for the sun to go down a bit would have made a huge difference here. Your clients will probably never notice, but it bugged me. The other thing that bugged me on some shots was the lack of catchlights. I realize that they both have very dark eyes, but they look like pits sometimes. I don't know if you used much or any fill flash, but that might have helped bring catchlights out more. A slight dodging on some of them (just catchlights not the whole eye) might do it too, or not I don't know :P

[th3r0m]

Nice work . I couldn't quite make it through the show (it seemed a bit slow i.e. the zooming and transitions were very jerky which bothered me a bit), but I did like what I saw. Also, I have to agree about the duplicate photos as stated above. Again, nice work.

Edit: After visiting a couple of other sites with sideshows, I think it is my connection producing the herky, jerky transitions.

[Philco]

Hi Stefani,
With a little adjusting, I could make it go faster. I've already removed some images. If you have 80 images, just a transition time of one extra second adds over a minute to the show...something that I'll play more with in the future. It's under four minutes, which I think is okay.

The clients are old friends of my wife. They know I'm waiting on PickPic to be installed, and for now they're happy to just have their images available in this format, since you can manually flip through them with the controls. For clients where I have a more formal relationship, this wouldn't do. That has something to with why I edited only to a point.

Thanks for the CC. I know exactly what you mean about that shadow in those few, and I tried at the time to get her closer and in the shadow, but it just wasn't going to happen due to the incline/sand on the ground. We shot everything in less than an hour and we covered a lot of ground. The usual marine cloud layer on the horizon killed the light in a hurry, so I went from ISO 100 to 800 quickly, at F3.2. I chose not to use fill flash for the last beach shots in part because we were cold, it was dark, and my wife went down the beach with my flash in hand. : ) - and we wanted to go eat pizza! Even with direct flash, like on the stairs, in Reza's eyes it's hard to see much reflection. The wedding is a week from Friday, and all the formals will be outside. I'm sure I'll use off camera fill for that.

Thanks.

[geester]

I think they were saying the average attention span is right around 2 mins for that type of slideshow. So you'd probably want to stay within those parameters. Once you get 30-60 seconds beyond that, it does feel very repitious.

[song4themoon]

I didnt make it through the whole show either but what I saw looked nice

[tlc]

its a little long, and some of the shots are basic repeats - also, and dont get me wrong, you have some really nice stuff there - they are very basic - i dont see any artistic PP done on these at all?

i would advise you stick at least a few more 'arty' type shots in there.

but all in all, you did a really nice job.

[LeesaB]

The pictures are nice...You did a good job, It was long, I did not watch the whole thing....maybe even a change of shirts or clothing would have been nice too...just a small suggestion with all the others.

[markdon]

didnt make past the maybe the first 15 images as they all looked the same

[Philco]

Okay, if you have an attention span of 15 images, maybe slideshows aren't your thing at all.

Let me just make it clear that A.) All my images will be viewed with PickPic in the very near future, so B.) All slideshows will be much more limited in terms of time and number of images. These are our friends, and they want to see all their images. This is my first one and it's been a fun experiment, especially for a program I wasn't into buying, but am now cheerleading. So, forgive me for putting up nearly four mintutes. The clients love it of course, but for the impartial observer, it is a lot and I appreciate the feedback. Even though it's long, I thought the controls w/ thumbnaials and ease of use for clicking through made showit a pretty cool program, so that was what I was tryint to show. The last few images are my favorites, so it's a shame.

Thanks for the feedback. I get what you're all saying and like I said, future slide shows will be much more selective rather than a viewing tool.

Cheers

[Grace]

i'm patient, i'll go watch the whole thing i understand your wanting to show all images for this particular event

kp

[Grace]

i can see why you like the last ones!!! very well executed!! (sp?) Its ashame everyone bashes the slideshow being long. I enjoyed seeing a couple that is so clearly inlove! Her smile is contagious! I think you did a great job capturing them. A little extra pp would be cool too, but these are really great images. I know they are extremely pleased.

[bcap]

I watched the show, it was great.

The slideshow looks great and the layout of the page looks fantastic.

Are you giving this to the customer or is it just for viewing purposes?

[geester]

sorry....after reading your initial post, didnt mean to critique as you weren't asking for it. I see you were just pointing out functionality of the program. Showit has a lot to offer and is a wonderful tool. You can create wonderful slideshows once you get the timing to the song in sync.

[Philco]

Thanks Kathy. I appreciate it! really.