Digital Storytelling with Photographs

A good photograph tells a story. A collection or series of good photographs can tell a story, too. I became interested in digital storytelling after I attended my first workshop almost 5 years ago. Here are some digital storytelling links that might help you get started:

Examples of Digital Stories

Jeff Curto's Digital Storytelling web page is a good starting place. I thought Fish and Pictures would be particularly interesting to photographers.

Take some time to tour through Daniel Meadows Photobus website. He has wonderful stories and photographs.

Flickr's group Tell a Story in 5 Frames (Visual Storytelling) provides guidelines towards the bottom of their group page that you might find helpful.

Digital Storytelling Resources

Great podcast with guidelines, a little over 60 minutes long The Digital Photography Show #47: How to Tell a Story in Pictures with Bobbi Lane

The Digital Storytelling Cookbook provides the ingredients and a recipe for creating a digital story. Some links are broken, but it's still a good resource.

The Center for Digital Storytelling emphasizes personal voice. Examples and resources.

Digital Storytelling: A Tutorial in 10 Easy Steps leads you through the process step by step.

Don't be fooled. The Adobe Digital Kids Club web page is not just for kids...

Cog Dog Roo lists 50 Web Ways to Tell a Story. Good ideas for getting started.

A great example of a storyboard from the Digital Storytelling Cookbook.

A blank storyboard template with 10 frames from the Digital Storytelling Cookbook.

A simple three-square storyboard.

Time-lapsed movies and slideshows

YouTube movie of time-lapse Executive Portraits photo shoot

YouTube movie of night sky Hiawassee Sky All Night

Click "view as slideshow" to see my own Time-lapsed Amaryllis opening

Software for Slideshows

Microsoft's PhotoStory

Picasa

Faststone Photo Viewer

Windows MovieMaker

Apple's iMovie

Brandywine River Valley

Had a great trip through the Brandywine River Valley in Pennsylvania and Delaware this weekend. I try to keep my camera ready while riding in the car. I got this shot through the passenger window (I was not driving). During our tour through one of the museums, one person kept describing the local landscape as bucolic. Seems to fit...

Quiet Waters Arts Festival 2007

I was in my first art show two weeks ago. Met lots of interesting people, made connections with several other photographers, and learned a little about being in an art show! The other exhibitors at the show were a very friendly and helpful group. There are more pictures from the show taken by Dorothy Farley, a friend who is also a member of the Digital Photography Club of Annapolis at Friends of Quiet Waters Arts Festival 2007.

Art of the American Snapshot Exhibit

I really enjoyed The Art of the American Snapshot 1888-1978 exhibit at the National Gallery of Art on its opening day two weeks ago. The exhibit is contained in several rooms and the photographs are arranged in chronological order. Many of the prints were humorous or contained an element of surprise. One of my favorites was a small circular silver gelatin print taken sometime after 1888 of a large fishbowl placed outdoors on a wicker stand. The light on the glass and the water is what first catches your eye, but looking a little closer, you notice that there were five or six slightly ominous baby alligators swimming in the fishbowl. The collection of approximately 200 snapshots is definitely worth seeing and is on display until December 31, 2007.

I have been interested in old photographs for as long as I can remember, but that exhibit has renewed my interest in old family snapshots and has changed the way I see them. Here's one of my sister and me on a family vacation in Minnesota a few years ago. My father probably snapped this one...


Photo Copyright © 2007 Roberta Mislevy Photography. All Rights Reserved.

Motion-blur

We went to a local carnival this week and got stuck part way up on the ferris wheel ride! Thankfully, we weren't up too high and it only took about 10 minutes for them to restart the ride. Where we stopped gave me a chance to see and take this shot. I like the way the slightly blurred Tilt-O-Whirl cabs suggest the motion of the ride.



There are a few more shots from the carnival in this Carnival Slideshow.

Sunflower at the Community Garden

A few raindrops and nice early morning light add to one of the first open sunflowers in the community garden.