Almark

I agree with Ralph, for a first time AV this is great. I would have liked to have been able to see the four images at the beginning, I found I only had time to look at two of them, but then they appeared later in the Av - so they could be considered a teaser! Again, well done.

Some feedback as requested: I didn't read the above replies before viewing the AV. But I too found myself wondering where the sound was. I too turned up the volume and then when the music did start - I had to turn back down again. For me the silence doesn't work. Perhaps some soft chanting or even birdsong, playing quietly would be better than silence. You have three large dust spots that show up in the skies from time to time. I loved the first scroll of the waterfall and red rock, wonderful work. I liked the native American music, although I would have preferred no words as I was distracted by trying to make them out to seen if they linked to the photographs. There was one part were there was a clip of squaky voice saying something over and over again. I couldn't make out what he was saying. Maybe that was the point, but for me it was a distraction. On two occasions you show a portrait on top of a landscape without blurring or darkening the background landscape. You do darken /blur them later on in the AV, so these two sort of stick out. The cloned water fall images that form a border of the left and right of a beautiful water fall - I found distracting. I don't think it adds anything, except to prompt the viewer to say "Why has he done that?" I loved the photography of the green foliage reflected on the chocolate coloured waters. Very effective, well done. The colours of the waters seemed to change a lot. Milky blue to chocolate back to milky blue again, and so on. I am not sure if it would add anything to the overall flow to keep the coloured waters together, or to provide some text on screen to discuss the change from chocolate to milky blue. I am sure folk would be interested. I liked the slow scroll up and then scroll down of the lush green valley and Canyon walls. If certainly created a sense of depth and height. Most impressive. I liked the speedy boats portion and the three zip across transitions - just enough to keep my attention in this long AV. All in all I was most impressed. I do short AV's, usually never over 5 mins and find myself getting bored on 10 mins photo harmony AV's, so I thought I might be hitting the escape key. But I didn't, I watched all the way through in one go. I found myself wanting to see what would happen next, where you were going next. I would have liked some more info and there is much scope for adding some narration here and there.

Oops! Sorry, Yes Richard was the year before I think. As my son is called Robert I should have remembered your hubby's name.

Maureen, You may have noticed that I have amended this AV to reflect your feedback. Although my good lady must stay in! She offers scale to the size of the snow drifts and ... er ... she would kill me if I took her out! You and Richard were great judges, I liked the way that occasionally you disagree slightly. Richard may say 'I am not sure about the music' and you would say 'I loved the music'. Great stuff, as you know the audience loves it when the judges disagree ;-) It lets them know that judging is a personal thing, and that there is 'no one way'. Thank you for coming to 'norn iron' and hope to see you both again.

Maureen, I thought your judging was spot on and I have taken your comments on the chin. I thought the 'that black and white our colours too' at about mid way worked well. But I was wrong, so I have changed it. Also: I thought I had darkened the backgrounds to my framed slides, but when I looked again I found that you were right. There were a number that had bright spots that distracted from the main image. So I did as you suggested and darkened them some more. As a result I feel the AV is much improved, so thank you both for your feedback. BTW: I also amended my 'Yellowstone in Winter' to reflect your hubby's comments about buildings/landscapes/buildings/landscapes - to - just buildings/landscapes. Again the advice was spot on. I had missed this, blinded by attempts at getting all my portraits together and forgetting about the overall 'flow'. However my good lady stays in ;-) AV festivals are a great opportunity to see and learn, and only a fool would ignore expert advice, tips and suggestions.

Davy, you are quite right. I forgot about the pan and zooms. You did tell me this - another senior moment! I have found images of 500k to work fine in fades, but as I never use anything else, I do not know how they work with pans and zooms - that clearly must use much more system resources. Viewed on 1920x1200 on my main Pc and on 1920x1080 on my laptop the show was image and transition perfect.

Davy, no need for "Pixel sizes are 2048 x 1360 and file size around .4 Mb ." Talk to me at the Cc and I will show you how to get these down to either 1024x768 or 1400x1050. Tut FYI http://www.bangor-camera-club.co.uk/bangor...ets/pdf/PDI.pdf

Paul and Roz I found the first few photos over saturated, suffering from 'digital green' or perhaps HDR over cooked. OR perhaps my monitor is wrong! The fungi images are superb. I found the images in panels to be slightly darker at times to the background. May I suggest you darken the blurred background image even more so the that the two images in the foreground stand out even more. All in all an excellent AV, wonderful photography and the music is perfect. Indeed i enjoyed this Av so much i played it back 3 times.

John, I loved the slow transitions, for me, they were near perfect. Just one of examples is the third image effect of the man walking down the street - superb stuff. I liked the mono /sepia work, but found some of the pop colour a bit too much, but that is just a personal preference. The composition included many lines into and from corners, and your control of light, reflections and shadows was excellent. All in all a most impressive set of photography, brought together in an AV, that conveys a different side to Venice - well done. The music was fine, but I suspect a more sorrowful and slower tune would work better. Although that is easy to say, and i can't think of anything just now that would work better.

Thank you Ralph for taking the time to download this and reply. The 60MB tiff's printed well but at first I thought the jpgs were awful, so I to make each about 500k to get the quality I wanted. Speigal im speigal, gets me everytime. It is a bit like the American Beauty music, I love it too, but is is a bit over used nowadays - as it can be easily downloaded. A friend told me he found this AV 'four minutes of sheer bliss' and asked me for a screensaver version. I was also asked to explain the transition effect. It is 'from centre' at 11, 48 to get the sweeping across effect. FYI. Thanks again.

Every year my camera club has a 'Panels' competitions, of six prints. I have brought my Colour and Mono submissions together and added some music. The colour won panel won 1st place in the Advanced Section and the mono panel won second place in the Advanced Section. The AV only last 4 mins and is 10.7MB download. If you have 4 mins and want to relax, then download and chill out ;-) Both panels were taken hand-held with a Nikon D300, the colour panel at ISO 3200 at 1/15s on a 18-200 VR lens. The mono panel used a remote flash at 1/60s on a Sigma 10-20mm lens. http://www.markallenphotography.co.uk/mark...eries/panel.exe

Great Av David, I liked the church windows. Let me know if you need hosting.

This was my other entry to the Northern Ireland Audio Visual Festival 2009. Yellowstone in Winter, with some narration. It achieved a High Commended PAGB Green Ribbon http://www.markallenphotography.co.uk/mark...yellowstone.exe (My colleague from my Camera Club cleaned up - winning 5 awards, including best novice AV and best open AV! Sadly he still uses ProShow ;-) and if you are interested the are links here: http://www.bangor-camera-club.co.uk/bangor...allyearl09.html )

Sadly the AV didn't do well in the NIPA AV Festival 2009. I had left the comment 'that black and white our colours too' at about mid way and then left the photographs of windows, stairs, light and shadow to stand for themselves. The judges didn't agree, they thought the comment should have been moved to the end. So I have moved it and updated the exe. Thank you all for your comments. Admiral, the effects for the windows, stairs, light and shadow was done in Photoshop, multiple layers, blurring and darkening the images behind so that the focus is on the brightest newest layer. You do this by duplicating the layer, darkening and bluriing it, then adding the new image. Then you duplicate it and do the same, and on and on. I am sure there are many ways of doing this, but that is how I did it. Updated http://www.markallenphotography.co.uk/mark...eries/mono2.exe

This my entry to the Northern Ireland Audio Visual Festival 2009 [a mere 7mb] http://www.markallenphotography.co.uk/mark...eries/mono2.exe

Hi Lin that HD you tube thingy was just great. (watched on a full HD, hi spec PC)

Igor, well done!

I have just bought the Mitzu HC5500, full HD. I'll let you know how it works when it arrives.

Very interesting, I will be watching this thread! Thanks Lin

good point, I will do this at this is the new standard. I will make a post here once done.

word tut on resizing images for projected digital image here http://www.markallenphotography.co.uk/pdi.pdf

Thank you for the feedback and I am glad I was able to help. Links updated, PTE.atn here http://www.markallenphotography.co.uk/PTE.atn Tut on it all works Word 97 http://www.markallenphotography.co.uk/actions.doc same in zip http://www.markallenphotography.co.uk/actions.zip

Some great ideas here. I look forward to the next version.

Hi Tomuk, The download was a bit slow, but worked eventually. I enjoyed your show, and in particular there are a number of fine portrait shots - the guy with the beard and sunglasses, the 3 star general are just two worthy of a mention in dispatches ;-) Sound/Music I found the soundtrack very loud and had to turn down my volume. (Normally I don't have to do this, in almost all cases I find the soundtrack to be just fine and occassionally I find them too low and have to bump them up a bit. This is the first one I have come across that I had to actually turn the sound volume down.) The 'chatter' background I found to be just a bit too loud and wondered if it should not be constant, rather than the fade in out, or sometimes cut out altogether only to re appear just seconds later. However, clearly you have put a lot of time and effort into this, and I really liked the music/visual link between the introduction of the drum music and the images of the drums - this worked very well. Well done. I thought the closing fancy graphics were a bit over the top, but that is just MHO. In summary this show has great potential. But by the sounds of it, you have already worked on this quite a bit, but I think you need to re visit the soundtrack.

Hi Dave, The photography makes superb use of lines, perspective and depth. My fav image is the one of the rolling road (the one after the girl on the bench with the dog) - Although I would be tempted to crop just a bit of the right hand side to get the road coming out of the corner - and then flipping it so that it comes out of the bottom left corner. But that's just me - I love lines and corners and you certainly have plenty here on offer. I know you welcome detailed feedback, so... I liked the flowers and the spacing of the flower images in the show works very well. If you have more, may I suggest you add them? There is a slight 'wobble' in the music just after the slide with the six bar gate and the sign Kuenzhi Creek. There is one image that is mainly grass, it's the weakest in the show and I suggest you replace it with more flowers! I liked the white border and viewing on a 1920x1080 laptop the show works really well, smooth and the music suited the serenity. I agree with Ken, I like the fact that you have included play controls. There a number of images that I wanted to 'take my eye for walk', and most enjoyable they were too!