With this comprehensive guide, you won’t have to suffer anymore.
Boring travel slideshows.
You know what I’m talking about. You gather at your friend’s place, who’s just returned from their travels. They fire up the computer, open up their photo gallery, and splash their journey onto the screen.
Usually, the first few photos are compelling. A crammed street. A stunning vista. (Or more likely, an airport lounge as they’re waiting for the plane).
Twenty minutes later, the glossly excitement has worn off. You wonder just how many photographs of buildings/trees/desert your friend could have taken. And they’re only on the first week of their two month trip.
You don’t have to sit through this nightmare anymore (or inflict it upon others). This comprehensive guide will show you how to craft memorable travel slideshows that will have your friends raging with envy and bubbling with compliments.
But first, a disclaimer. This guide is NOT for professional and/or accomplished travel filmmakers. I’m sure those people have their own way of doing things.
Instead, this guide is for the vast majority of amateur photographers that are capable with a camera, possess basic video editing software, and lack the storytelling skills to bring it all together in a killer presentation.
So if that sounds like you — read on, dear friend, and heed these words.
Consider your audience
Who are you making your travel slideshow for? Yourself? Your friends and family? The world? It’s always best to start with your audience in mind when you make these first crucial decisions.
Your audience will dictate everything from the photos, the soundtrack, and the overall impression of the travel slideshow.
For instance, your friends and family may enjoy slow pleasant shots of mountains and temples, while your friends are hungry for a taste of the nightlife, glorious beaches, and midnight fire-twirlers.
In some cases, these slideshows can be one and the same. In others, you may want to create multiple versions for each audience.
Tell a story
Random slideshows are boring. These are slideshows filled with a mix of photographs that are arranged in no coherent order, or predictably chronological.
These are boring because they don’t offer any compelling narrative to guide the viewer through your journey.
Think about it – when was the last time you watched a film that was a random assortment of movie clips? Unless you only rent art house flicks, chances are, you watch films that offer a story.
Your job, as editor, is to convey the “emotion” of the trip, rather than a comprehensive play-by-play. Nobody wants to see endless photographs of absolutely everything you saw/ate/did.
They want to experience a taste of what it feels like to venture into a world they’ve yet to experience. Do them a favour and tell them your story.
Use Appropriate Transitions & Movement
Once you’ve selected and arranged your photographs in some semblance of order, you can then decide on transitions and movement.
Keep in mind, certain types of transitions invoke certain feelings in your audience. For example, slow fades are calm and relaxing. Hard cuts are jarring and frantic. You should attempt to match the transition with visual emotion you’re trying to convey.
But sometimes even interesting photos can become monotonous if they’re always sized exactly to the screen. An effective trick is to add movement to the photos, zooming in on interesting aspects much like you would a video clip.
A word of caution: this technique can be easily abused, with too much movement confusing your audience. In this case, less is more.
Insert movie clips
These days pretty much every new electronic device, from mobile phones to digital cameras, has a video recorder built in.
True, the quality hasn’t been all that great, but it’s getting better all the time. The last camera I bought was able to shoot video that looked excellent when blown up on TV, which is more than good enough for YouTube.
You’d be surprised at how effective a clip of you jumping off a waterfall or a 360 pan of Times Square looks when mixed in with the rest of your photographs. It breaks up the monotony and visually brings your trip to life.
If you blend the video clips in well enough, you’ll even leave your audience with the impression of movement throughout the entire film (what I call ‘motion transference’).
Pick A Good Soundtrack
This sounds easy – just grab a couple of your favourite songs and throw them in the background right? Wrong. That’s a recipe for an utterly forgettable travel slideshow.
After all, when you consider your soundtrack ultimately sets the tone of your entire presentation, you realize the music is the most important decision.
Here’s what I do: split my film into multiple sections, than decide on the “mood” you’d like to invoke, and how that fits into the overall structure of your slideshow.
For example, my Thailand trip starts off conveying the feeling of arriving in Bangkok with a heavy rock song. From there, it’s on to Koh Phangan, party central, and the music continues that mood.
Next, I shift gears for a peaceful reflection in the jungle wonderland of Khao Sok National Park, and I picked some ambient, dream-like electronica. In all cases, I matched the music with the mood I wanted to convey about the location.
Avoid Photo Repetition
The invention of digital photography allows us to take thousands of shots at a time. This does not mean you should include more than a fraction of these in your travel slideshow.
There’s no better way to kill a memorable photograph in an audience’s mind than to have 8 other versions right after it.
Instead, limit yourself to the few shots that let you tell the story. You have to weigh the visual and emotional impact of each sequence to determine the impression you want to create.
If this means cutting out some of your favourite shots, so be it.
Mix Scenery With People
A rule of thumb for scenic photographs – they’re always more interesting when you’re actually there.
The colors, the majesty, the smells. None of that is conveyed through a TV or computer screen. That means try not to use too many scenic photos in your travel slideshow.
Scenic photos are helpful in setting a stage for the destination, but don’t rely on them to keep your audience’s interest for long.
A good strategy is too mix the scenery photographs with shots of people, as faces are generally more compelling than sunsets.
Keep it short (leave them wanting more)
We’ve all watched travel slideshows that start out well, but after an hour of mountain sunsets and drunken party photos, you’re fighting to stay awake. Don’t let this happen to you.
Carefully weigh every photograph and every video clip you’ve used. Does it further the momentum of the slideshow? Is it visually compelling? Do I get tired after watching it more than twice?
When in doubt, cut it out. It’s always better to leave your audience wanting more, rather than buried under an avalanche of mediocrity.
Don’t narrate it
Finally, the big day arrives! You gather your audience around your TV or projector screen, the air buzzing with anticipation.
You dim the lights, voices hush. You click play and wait for your travel slideshow masterpiece to blow them away.
The best thing you can do from this point on, is keep quiet. I know, the temptation to deliver informative and fascinating tidbits behind every photograph will be great.
You’ll be thinking: what if they don’t know how old that building is? Or what the name of my guide was? Or how incredibly drunk I was when I took that?
Trust me. You will ruin your slideshow if you try and narrate it. A better idea is to view the show once in its entirety, THEN go back and reveal the factoids behind your journey.
The important thing is to allow your audience to experience the slideshow on their own terms, without your voice in the background.
When the lights come back on, they will applaud your genious, and wonder when you’re going on your next trip.
Ian MacKenzie is editor of Brave New Traveler, and co-founder of the blogging community TravelBlogger. Aside from writing, he spends his time exploring the fundamental nature of existence and wishing he did more backpacking.I’m sure you have your own strategies for the perfect travel slideshow. Share in the comments!
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22 Comments... join the discussion!
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Hey Dave — that’s pretty much how I spent 2-3 weeks after my last trip; collecting all the photos/videos and creating a slideshow dvd. sure it was a lot of work, but it helped keep the trip alive while I merged back into “real life” again.
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I’ve got so many photos right now I have no idea what to do with them all!
I managed to put together a slide show from my China leg….but after I did that I didn’t have time left.
A good sound track always makes a difference.
Very nice article….I shall use it…if I ever get round to sorting out my photos!
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I wonder how did you make slideshow movies? I am trying to find out such freeware for a while but can’t find it. Your Thailand trip movie on YouTube is brilliant.
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Hi TJ – I created the films with a cheap video editing program called Roxio Videowave ($50). Since then I’ve moved on to a higher end Adobe suite, but Roxio was easily good enough for the Thailand film. If you’re looking for freeware, you could probably get away with Windows Move Maker which should be on your comp already, if you’re on Windows.
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This is a really good post. I am going to Peru, in 2 weeks, and i never thought about creating a sideshow. I just upload my photos to Flickr, and forget it. I will certainly try it.
@TJ
you might want to try http://picasa.google.com/. I haven’t tried building sideshows in it, but i am pretty sure you can embed videos.P.S. Found the post via Lifehacker, this looks like something that belongs in my RSS feed.
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Great article! Travel slide shows are a bit of a hobby of mine… http://www.photoshow.com is a great site to use while you are on the road!
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Ian,
Which program in adobe suit you can use for creating slideshows? As far as my knowledge goes, you could make 24p project in Adobe premiere pro 2.0 to create slideshows but pan and zoom is a royal pain in the neck. On the top of that 24p projects is a good idea for NTSC lads but we PAlites can not use this so easily..I had a look at Chad’s comment on photoshow and it looks really good. I am downloading trial version to play around with.
@Pasha,
Not too sure if Picasa can make video slideshows? It is a new upgrade. I installed and uninstalled twice, it didn’t stand upto my taste..↵ -
The easiest slideshow app to use is Photoshop Elements. Free 30-day download. Very easy and results will blow you away.
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@ TJ – I actually found Adobe Premiere Pro fairly easy to do pans and zooms, but the amount of settings available to tweak can get out of hand for newbies. That’s why I recommend something like Roxio for simplicity’s sake. It also has a fairly easy slideshow feature, along with dvd menu creation and burning.
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Well, nice tips for a slideshow. I think that most of us know a situation when you have too much photo for your show to be interesting.
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Great tips, thanks so much! I’m going to Europe this summer so this is a very useful list.
Yeah, as far as I know Roxio is good, but it is SO SO SO much easier to just do the whole thing on a Mac. Easier, more beautiful, and (after the computer) free. Thanks again Ian.↵ -
We take a slightly different, approach using some of those ideas on our online travel journals:
http://www.mainething.com/AuNz07/
http://www.mainething.com/samerica06/
http://www.mainething.com/hawaii/Thanks
David↵ -
Good article. I have been making slide shows for many years and with new software available it has become easier and faster. For Windows the best free program is Photo Story 3 (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/photostory/default.mspx).
When using Ken Burns effects (zooming and panning) I found the flickering of lines that are slightly off of horizontal and vertical lines quite anoying (particularly at higher definitions). I found only one program that handles this problem well – ProShow Gold (http://www.photodex.com/products/proshowgold/) -at about $70 it comes with DVD authoring as well as burning programs. Both Windows programs give you fully automatic or manual control of Ken Burns effects (just import pictures and music and you are done – then you can tweak , if you want, presentation to your liking).
I also have a MacBook Pro (which I love, and prefer over PC for many applications) and I agree with kt that it is easy to make slide shows with iLife, but no matter how hard I tried their quality is much worse then the ones I can get with Windows programs.
Lastly, one WIndows program worth of checking out is MemoriesOnTV (http://www.codejam.com/). This program, as well as ProShow Gold come with free trials.
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Another idea is to put together a professional looking, hard bound, coffee table type of album (such as a Photobook) and have your guests discover it as it sits on the living room table. They will ask questions.
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Combining photography with travel, in my case done on a Vespa scooter, is a wonderful activity and I do it a lot for my blog Scooter in the Sticks. The advice here is exceptional and I look forward to going through more of your content.
I might offer some disagreement about narration though. I agree that for most people narration creates more problems than it solves. But for the exceptional storyteller with the right images narration either recorded or spoken can yield an amazing performance.
The challenge is figuring out whether one is an exceptional story teller or not.
Steve Williams
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Some great tips. I think the most important one is the photo selection tip. With digital picture there are so many yet it’s important to trip the amount to avoid making the slideshow boring.
Another point to consider is the photo/video sequence. Usually I sort photos by location but sometimes the first part of the trip isn’t necessarily the most interesting part. I think that for the sake of generating interest especially at the beginning the show the photos can avoid following the chronological sequence of locations as visited during the holiday. This also applies when sorting photos for a particular location in the slideshow.
Looking forward for more content.
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Hey everyone, thanks for all the feedback on the article. Some great follow up tips were shared. One thing seemed to be contentious though, and that was the “don’t narrate” tip, which I feel I should clarify.
First of all, if you’re doing a slideshow where you actually advance the photos yourself, with no music in the background, etc, then BY ALL MEANS narrate away. This is really more of your story with an accompanying slideshow to back you up.
In my case above, I’m talking about a fully automated film/slideshow that runs on it’s own. In this case, narrating the slideshow would mean you’re talking “over” the presentation, which is distracting, or you’d have to stop the show, which breaks the magic.
So hopefully that makes sense.
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Total agree with you. Ian! I’ve been bored by too many photos that are not edited or organized before sending out to friends. I usually use free tool such as Picasa to edit my photos, trying to show people the most important part. I don’t care if the photos are original or not. I am not a professional photographer after all.
Nice tips. Thanks.
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Another comment on “narrating…” The use of captions or title slides may be helpful if there are things you’d like to point out. For example, I just did a presentation for our church that highlighted many of our summer activities. Adding titles to the first slide of each section helped people understand where we were in the show.
Rather than creating a “blank” title slide, I pick a slide from the event or trip and add the title to it. This helps the show move along.
Note — when doing this, avoid “busy” slides, and consider raising the brightness and lowering the contrast of the photo before adding the title.
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