CameraCrazy

Ways to stop people from subconsciously sighing when you mention you have a slide show they might like.

When someone mentions that they have prepared a slideshow there seems to be a subconscious reaction to the audience. Instantly, there memory is triggered of the 3 hour slideshow they were forced to endure from a relatives vacation or a wedding. Agonizing mental anguish occurs of them visualizing themselves stuck on a couch, forced to view 300 photos of the same thing that they are not particularly interested in, with at least half of them out of focus or some other major distraction that ruins the picture. Worst of all, not only are they stuck on the couch but there is no easy way to excuse yourself from the situation without offending the presenter. Does this sound familiar! Well perhaps not to the level I described but I imagine there has been a few situations where someone is presenting a slide show or just showing you pictures on the computer or in print and thoughts have come across your mind of “just how many more do I have to look at”.

I think the main reason I wanted to write about this was sparked from me going through my own photographs from the summer and trying to narrow down the good from the bad and perform touch-ups on them. I got fairly behind in maintaining my photographic collection this summer. My mentality for the summer was to take pictures, download them to the laptop and enjoy the rest of the day. After all I could always edit them on a rainy day. Well that never really happened so now I’m sitting here with hundreds of photos and people wanting to see them.

There is lots of ways to show off your photographs to people, you can do the formal slideshow, put them on a website or upload them to a photographic site like Flickr, or print out a bunch and pass them around. Regardless of how you show off your work there are a few things to keep in mind. Below are a few tips that I have picked up to minimize the chance of you becoming the stereotypical slideshow presenter.

The number one thing to keep in mind and this applies to general presentations too, is know your audience. For example, it would be futile to show a recently divorced person a bunch of wedding photographs showing the joys of marriage. Chances are it would not go over so well. I think Brooks Jensen from LensWork photography put it best, “the most important thing about a photograph is the mind state of the viewer.” Your goal when showing off your work is to do so in a manner that will attract the audience and get them as interested in your work.

So how do you do that! Seems like a pretty big task, well it is. There is no sure fire way of encapsulating your entire audience, but there are things you can do to keep them more interested. One way of doing this is to only show your best work. There is no reason to show 10 photographs of the same thing. Find the best one and use it. This keeps slideshows or presentation of photographs down to a limited number of pictures. Honestly, in my personal opinion if a slideshow goes more than 20 minutes then its too long. Any more than 20 and audience excitement will begin to fade. If you are doing an actual slideshow that doesn’t require you explaining any pictures then put music into the slideshow that suits the content. I find things can get awkward if there is complete silence, if there is some music to lighten the mood or help express the photos put it in. Your audience may feel compelled to say something just to break the silence if they have had a good chance to look at the photo and are finished with it. I find music works best at a fairly low volume, enough for people to hear, but not so loud that the music dominates the photograph.

This brings up another good point. Don’t setup your slideshow to a predetermined time (i.e. 20 seconds per slide). You should be determining when the audience is finished looking at your photograph. Photographs have a life of their own, some can be looked at for 5 seconds and the viewer is reader to move on while the viewer may want to study another photograph for a minute. If you’re presenting the show, let the audience reactions tell you when to move on. This also gives you the opportunity to flip back if you happen to move on before the viewers were ready.

Always leave them wanting more. One way to make them excited for another slideshow in the future is if they leave the previous slideshow satisfied, but not entirely fulfilled. If you leave them saying, “Ahhh, there is no more” or “That’s all”. Then you likely have peaked their curiosity and just smile politely and tell them that all you prepared, but should have some more in the future.

This article is more about general presentation tips. It is a whole other art for learning different ways to order photos that are presented. Perhaps we can tackle that issue in another post.

See! Always leave them wanting more.