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Move over Soundslides: 4 Free online slideshow creators Tuesday, February 03, 2009 The photo slideshow has revolutionized online journalism and can be seen on nearly every major news site. Many are created in Flash and many more are created using the popular program Soundslides. The problem is building slideshows in Flash can be daunting for the non-technical reporter and Soundslides, while extraordinarily simple to use, costs money. Because many newsrooms face financial difficulty, journalists must cut corners where they can. In that spirit, the following free online slideshow creators allow the user to blend photos and audio to create embeddable slideshows without spending money on software. Each slideshow was created with the same seven photos (source) and 30-second audio clip. Which one is best? You be the judge.

Nielsen: Online Video Use Skyrockets Online video engagement by Internet users is deepening, according to a new report on the online landscape released last week by The Nielsen Company. Nielsen Online CEO John Burbank takes a look at the economic and advertising impacts of the report.

Foto8 was established in 1998 as an online web journal featuring quality photojournalism by professionals worldwide. Today, it continues to produce innovative online presentations of photojournalism, including providing the online resource for buying essential photography books and tickets to events, publishes the physical quarterly magazine EI8HT and houses the new gallery of photography in London, HOST. Over the years Foto8 has become known for its award-winning documentary photography presented in an exciting online and print format. From classical photo-stories to contemporary multi-media shows the website and magazine, and now the gallery, continue to stimulate and innovate. By showcasing this work Foto8 aims to inform and involve the viewer whilst pioneering new ways to tell stories. Foto8 believes that documentary photography performs an essential role in modern society. It is a valuable tool of communication as well as a vital part of educating ourselves about the lives of others which are often distant from our own. Photography allows us to look into, as well as at, lives of other people, to learn about their world, and in the process to define the issues that are important to us.

At PixelPress our intent is to encourage documentary photographers, writers, filmmakers, artists, human rights workers and students to explore the world in ways that take advantage of the new possibilities provided by digital media. We seek a new paradigm of journalism, one that encourages an active dialogue between the author and reader and, also, the subject. Our online magazine features projects that use a variety of linear and non-linear strategies, attempting to articulate visions of human possibility even while confirming human frailty. For us the digital revolution is a revolution in consciousness, not in commerce. We work with organizations such as Crimes of War, Human Rights Watch, World Health Organization and UNICEF to create Web sites that deal directly with contemporary issues in complex and innovative ways that circumvent media sensationalism and simplification. We also try to factor in ways that the viewer can help remedy social problems, rather than remain a spectator. Recently we completed a site focusing on how to end polio worldwide; another trying to aid an orphanage in Rwanda; one trying to reclaim the Brazilian forest; and a site featuring the images of photographers from the Vietnam War. And we also create books with photographers such as Machiel Botman, Kent Klich and Sebastião Salgado on social themes, as well as traveling exhibitions using both digital and conventional processes.

The Beauty of the Slideshow - Now Available to Everyone By Stanley LearystanleylearycloseAuthor: Stanley Leary See Author's Posts (38) Recent Posts * Still Images Plus Audio Can Be More Effective Than Online Video * Teaching Is a Great Way to Learn * Telling Stories with a Telephoto Lens * If Your Pictures Aren't Good Enough, You're Not Close Enough * What Kind of Photographer Are You? Stanley Leary is a Black Star photographer who has been telling stories for more than 20 years as a photojournalist. His work has appeared in Newsweek, Business Week, Sports Illustrated, Wired, Chicago Tribune, NY Times, World Book Encyclopedia, Information Week, Popular Mechanics, Technology Review, Atlanta Journal and Constitution, and many other publications. in Video and Multimedia on January 20th, 2008 Even before the Internet, I appreciated the slideshow. I created presentations with multiple projectors and audio, and I was always impressed with what the combined media could communicate. Even compared to video - where you move right through a moment so quickly you can miss the subtlety of it - the slideshow has its unique charms. The problem, in the old days, was that you had to have the audience present to deliver the program; it was a lot of work for a small number of people. The printed page reached a much larger audience. Today, with the Web becoming the leader in delivering the news, we are no longer limited to printed words and still images on the page. Rather than publishing a quote, we can deliver audio of the interviews and the experience, giving a story authenticity in a way that we couldn't achieve before. We can create slideshows for everyone - to watch whenever they choose.

Joe McNally shoots assignments for magazines, ad agencies, & graphic design firms. Clients include Sports Illustrated, ESPN Magazine, National Geographic, Life, Time, Fortune, New York Magazine, GEO, Golf Digest, Discover, Men's Journal, Business Week, Rolling Stone, New York Stock Exchange, Target, Sony, GE, Nikon, Lehman Brothers, & PNC Bank. In addition to having been a recipient of the Alfred Eisenstaedt Award for outstanding magazine photography, McNally has been honored numerous times by several of the following: Communication Arts, Applied Arts, Photo District News, Pictures of the Year, The World Press Photo Foundation, The Art Directors' Club, American Photo, and Graphis. Joe's teaching credentials include: the Eddie Adams Workshop, the National Geographic Masters of Contemporary Photography, the Santa Fe Workshops, the Smithsonian Institute Masters of Photography, Rochester Institute of Technology, Maine Photo Workshops, Department of Defense Worldwide Military Workshops, and the Disney Institute. He has also worked on numerous "Day in the Life" projects. One of McNally's most notable large scale projects, "Faces of Ground Zero - Giant Polaroid Collection", has become known as one of the most primary and significant artistic responses to the tragedy at the World Trade Center. Joe was described by American Photo magazine as "perhaps the most versatile photojournalist working today" and was listed as one of the 100 most important people in photography. In January 1999, Kodak and Photo District News honored Joe by inducting him into their Legends Online archive. In 2001, Nikon Inc. bestowed upon him a similar honor when he was placed on their website's prestigious list of photographers noted as "Legends Behind the Lens".

On the eve of the election, a number of Magnum photographers have been venturing into American to capture what they can of this historic moment in time. The project is called InSight America. But rather than publish this work as a book a year after the fact, Magnum is posting the work online and on the fly. I caught up with Alex Webb after his recent journey to Ohio:

The End of Newspapers 31 Mar 2009 The eventual demise of the U.S. print newspaper has seemed inevitable since the emergence of the web in the mid 90s, but the events of recent months have confirmed just how dire the situation is, and suggest that the end may be very near. What hasn't been discussed very much is the impact this will have on photojournalism. The Albuquerque Tribune closed a year ago, The Rocky Mountain News a month ago, and last week the Seattle Post-Intelligencer moved to an all-web version . In these cases and many others, jobs have been lost, and communities have lost a mirror on themselves and an advocate. Gannett and Newhouse papers are requiring employees to take an unpaid furlough, and The New York Times has announced salary cuts and lay offs. Sadly, none of these measures are solutions- they are all just stop gaps to slow things down until a "new business model" can be found that will make online news profitable.

A New Website for a Changing World SocialDocumentary.net is a new website that features documentary photography from around the world-images and words that explore the human condition. Easily Create Documentary Websites About Critical Issues Facing Our World Today Professional and amateur photographers, journalists, NGOs, students-anyone with a story to tell and a collection of good photographs-can easily and affordably begin creating websites on SocialDocumentary.net. Global warming, international justice, post-conflict reconstruction, HIV/AIDS, or life in Afghanistan or suburban America are just a few of the themes that you can find on SocialDocumentary.net. The goal of this website is to make our lives richer and more informed about issues affecting us and our world today. Powerful photographs can also lead to meaningful change in the lives of ordinary people. SocialDocumentary. net provides tools for photographer to inform viewers how to take action-either by supporting NGOs doing work on the issues, or by engaging in direct political action. Not all documentary photographers are concerned with action. Many photographers featured on SocialDocumentary.net are concerned with subtleties of the human experience and exploring personal themes. Photographs on SocialDocumentary.net-whether of struggling farmers in Africa or of suburban teenagers in Philadelphia-offer a fresh way to look at the world and a greater understanding of humanity. The secondary goal is to create an online image bank of quality photographs documenting all aspects of the world created by an international collection of photographers. This will enable students, college professors, journalists, and anyone else to easily see any part of the world in quality digital imagery and gain valuable information about the subjects they are viewing. We encourage all photographers, everywhere, to use this site as a tool in their own image-making and documentary exploration. We also encourage n

Photographic truth and Photoshop April 17th, 2009 Photography's anxiety about truth, manipulation and reality has been on show recently. In different ways and from different contexts, people have been asking: "how much Photoshop is too much"? From the realm of fashion, French Elle is being celebrated for running a cover story in which the models photographs have not been 'Photoshopped' (thereby confirming, as I've noted previously, that digital manipulation is the norm in this visual domain). From the world of photojournalism, blogs like 1854, PDNPulse and the Online Photographer (with a follow-up here) have been buzzing with the story of the Danish photographer Klavs Bo Christensen who was excluded from that country's Picture of the Year competition for excessive colour manipulation of his Haiti story. Along with two others, Christensen was asked to submit his RAW files to the competition judges who felt that the colour in his photographs had been excessively saturated (their debate can be heard here), and removed his images from the competition as a result. Christensen was subsequently happy to have his files put on the web for comparison and discussion, thereby performing an important service to the photographic community.

multi media photo essays from the magnum group

good source of news on central asia and caucasus

In the first years of the Iraq war, Noor co-founder and Time magazine contributor Yuri Kozyrev travelled behind enemy lines, following the conflict from both the US military and Iraqi insurgents' perspectives. 'I spent a lot of time with both sides,' he says. 'I would be with the rebels and then go across the road, knock on the doors of a palace, go inside and find myself with the US military.'

burn is an evolving journal for emerging photographers. burn is curated by magnum photographer david alan harvey.

Here are three slightly different versions of the same story, "Mom Goes to War," which I photographed last summer with reporter Mark Brunswick while working at The (Minneapolis) Star Tribune. In the story, Maj. Patricia Baker, a helicopter pilot in the Minnesota National Guard, prepares to go to Iraq for her second deployment, and her son Zach talks about his mother leaving. The first version uses only natural sound, while the other two use loops from GarageBand. I did a limited amount of music editing to fit it to the video.