David Bryson: November 2006 Archives
Along with programmes like FotoMagico from Boinx Soundslides is a great little programme for creating audiovisual materials. For a simple AV presentation just click to upload a sequence of images (jpgs) then click to upload a sound track (mp3, aiff, wav) which could be music or description of images for a lecture and it is ready. The final presentation can be fine tuned very easily changing the synchronization of images with the presentation, skin for the presentation, titles and any other text.
The real advantage of this programme is that it is available for Mac and Windows and appeals very strongly to students. They can create AV presentations very quickly from their photographs and control how they run then show them online or in class sessions. For sessions where you want students to show there work whether images of illustrations or photographs it adds something more than images on their own.
The programme can be run free with soundslides logo dropping down in first frame and a link or buy for $39.99 only other need is Flash 7. Examples of presentations are available from the soundslides forum. It was designed for journalists to combine pictures with reports but works well for other markets.
The forum includes some interesting soundslide presentations:
I thought it was about time I got back to writing and looking at scientific photography on my blog so I here is a recent photograph of poppy seeds. Yes well exciting! Actually poppy seeds I realized after taking photographs of bread with ultraviolet fluorescence looked interesting so I used photomacrography to get closer and the shapes on the surface are hexagonal.
Heaxgons are not uncommon in nature from the shells of some prehistoric creatures, to eyes of moths and other insects, shapes of honeycomb and wasps nests and inside our eyes with the corneal endothelium. More on hexagons to follow this piece.
For information on the mathematics of hexagons go to http://www.mathopenref.com/hexagon.html
