Importance of Deadlines

Without deadlines would I get anything done? Probably, but deadlines sure provide a little extra motivation to move a task to the top of the priority heap.

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I committed several months ago to give a slide show based on my Bellingham Impressions book, which was published last August. The show dates are this Monday and Tuesday, so today I finally made time to select the photos and sequence them. The show will be all digital, created in Open Office Impress. I already had digital files for everything that’s in the book, as well as a number of other photos I wanted to include in the show, so that part was easy.

For me, the hard part of building a slide show is deciding how to arrange the images so it makes sense and has a nice flow. I didn’t want to mimic the book, which has a color-based design that looks good as 2-page spreads. Print and screen are two very different media. To put the show in sequence I used what seems like an anachronistic technique — I printed thumbnails of every image I might want to include and cut them apart so I had dozens of little squares of paper. Then I started playing with the order, moving pictures around until I was happy. I numbered each photo, then picked up the thumbnails and carried them to my computer so I could page through them as I entered photo file names and built my show. I made a couple of minor revisions to the order and I was done.

Finally, I previewed the entire show and thought about what I wanted to say when each slide was on the screen. I’ll run through the show again on Sunday after I transfer it to my laptop. If you’re in Bellingham Tuesday, come to the Whatcom Museum at 12:30 for the brown bag series in the Rotunda Room and see the show. I’ll have autographed books for sale, too.

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