Assignment 7: Showbeyond

This was by far the most meaningful assignment of the semester for me.  The last months have been difficult for my family.  We have had to deal with a terminal illness, two deaths and a host of other serious problems.  It has been one thing after another after yet another.  My mother was under a ton of stress and I knew she needed a break.  So I checked out a Nikon D60 DSLR camera with a couple of lenses for her to use over the weekend.  She was thinking about buying one so this gave her a chance to try it out to see if she liked it.  It also gave us a chance to get away from all the awful things that were happening.

We spent a whole Saturday taking pictures.  We crossed the county from city to swamp. We photographed a 150-year-old church, an old school house, my nephew’s little league football game and dozens of other things.  We spent the longest amount of time at the greenway.  It usually takes about twenty minutes to casually walk the length of the trail.  We were there for over two hours. My mother is a nature lover and she passed that on to me.  It seemed like there was something new and beautiful to look at with every step we took.  All the wildflowers were in full bloom and the light was absolutely perfect.  Although it was a beautiful day there were very few people out on the trail.  For the most part we were there alone in the peace and quiet of nature.   

I had planned on using some photographs I had taken at the county fair for my Showbeyond project.  They were bright, fun and colorful but the greenway held the most meaning to me.  The hardest part of the assignment was choosing which photographs to include in the slideshow.  (I had taken hundreds of pictures that weekend.)   My favorite among them all was the picture of my mom looking through her camera.  At that moment she was not thinking about my uncle’s cancer or my niece’s passing.  She wasn’t thinking about all the bad things that were happening in our lives.  She was just taking a photograph. She was happy, calm and completely relaxed. 

I found Showbeyond to be an easy program to use for the most part.  There were a couple of glitches.  First some of my pictures got out of order for some reason and I had a little trouble rearranging them.  Second, I had the most trouble getting the background music to fit the slideshow.  I used Audacity to cut the length exactly to the preview.  However, every time I tried to drop the music into the show I got a warning that it was too long.  So I tried to cut the length shorter.  Then it was way too short.  It stopped before the last two slides. This is why some of the slides are short and some are longer than others.  I had to get the length as close as I could in Audacity and then adjust the slides after the music was dropped.  I have to say I prefer programs that allow me to see the audio and video timelines and work on each as needed.