As I’ve mentioned before, you don’t need a video camera if you want to make a YouTube video. Still pictures can have an equal impact. To bring out their full potential, you’ll want to upload them into an editor like Windows Moviemaker or iMovie.
Then you’ll want to play around with two things: transitions and movement. Transitions are things like dissolves and wipes that you can put between the pictures. This can smooth out the edits and make them visually more pleasing to the eye. You can also use a transition to signal a shift in topic or mood.
Movement involves introducing motion into a still image. So you might have a pan across a picture or you could have the image go from a wide shot to the close up. This is a great way to jazz up your photographs and make them come to life.
In essence, you’re introducing low level animation to your photographs. The documentarian, Ken Burns, is well known for using this technique.
Sometimes it’s easier to show something than it is to talk about it. Take a look at this video clip from one of my presentations. I had audio but no video to go with it. So I used a series of photos and stock images to illustrate the story. Note the use of transitions and movement.
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