Audio slideshows: more than just conventional storytelling?

A picture is worth a thousand words. Or so the adage goes. But what if you were to add words to the picture? Would this take away from the power of the image, the personal connotations brought about and envisioned by the viewer? In audio slideshows, the balance between the lexicon and the imagery is a fine one, and it is the story that is at stake if this parity is not redressed.

There is more to the act of creating an audio slideshow than just throwing together a podcast and some pictures into a misshapen marriage of convenience and hoping that each will do the other justice. The words need to be written to the images, but not in a way that would conventionally be done in, say, a television broadcast. The eye attaches far greater meaning to stills than to moving film, and a jarring of speech in a slideshow would resonate greater with the mind than if the sound was to a movie.

It is therefore important to capture  images striking enough and relevant enough to catch the eye of the beholder,  while coupling  these with words that compliment but do not overpower the pictures selected to chronicle your message.

The medium of storytelling is a crowded one, with new methods and means of transcription cropping up seemingly daily. If it is a journalist’s sole focus to regale their audience with stories, and now is a time when competition for getting the story out fast is rife, it is refreshing that there is still a place in this age of new media for audio slideshows to take the time to tell the story not necessarily first, but fully, allowing the viewer the chance to add and attach significant personal input in the way they interpret not only the pictures but also the message behind the words.