Critique of Slideshows and galleries

The first slide show I examined for this assignment was one from WBZ-4. Here the news station features photos from a flooding rainstorm and damaging windstorm early last week in the Boston area. The slideshow does not focus on one particular aspect of the storm, but rather features all of its effects. The photos are from various communities and show flooded rivers, streets, washed out railroad tracks, and ocean waves crashing over sea-walls.

http://wbztv.com/slideshows/weekend.rain.storm.20.1560453.html

The second slide show I found, this one with sound, is coverage by the LA times of the devastating Haitian earthquake last month. This footage and audio was high impact for the viewer. The slideshow featured a reporter talking about conditions at a makeshift hospital in Haiti while raw audio of chilling screams of pain played behind his voice. The slideshow captures the harsh reality for the injured and is displays several particularly gruesome pictures of the wounded.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-haiti-loomis1-ss,0,266018.htmlstory

The photo gallery I found was from national geographic, showing various toxic chemicals and their disposal. One aspect of this photo gallery that I found interesting was national geographic included "photo fast facts", showing what time of day the photo was taken, what type of camera was used, etc.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0207/feature1/zoom4.html

Which does a better job?

I think the slideshows and photo galleries do serve a function as a storytelling tool, however they have a very limited use. Slideshows are good in the sense that the viewer does not need to spend nearly as much time viewing it as they would reading an article. Many people who have only a limited interest in a story will just look at the picture on the page and the caption and move on. I prefer slideshows to photo galleries because of the ease of use. Rather than actually clicking through the photos, slideshows will usually scroll threw the photos for you. Of course, the drawback to slideshows is the viewer does not have the option to only view the photos in which they are interested.

What difference does sound make?

The sound makes the slideshow much more engaging for the viewer. For one thing, having audio in addition to pictures engages two of your senses(audio and visual) as opposed to just one or the other, with a podcast or pictures.