Picture this

Finding a photo gallery is a little bit more difficult than I guessed it would be. There are so many out there, it's hard to choose just one. I went to all of the news sites that I normally go to, and I was surprised to find that most of the photo gallaries on those sites were rather simple, just click on the arrow to get to the next one. Not a whole lot of cool flash technology, but it gets the job done.

Another observation I made as I scanned through more and more images was that photo gallaries are one really great way to see the world around you. I went to the National Geographic site, and found a little area called "Culturally Speaking" and it has a few little photo gallaries with pictures of different cultures around the world. There really aren't a whole lot of pictures to every gallary, but the pictures that were chosen were really great. And I liked the fact that the photographer wrote a little cutline to sort of give a bit of background. Although the pictures were fantastic, I realized that I was wishing it was presented a little better. I know that the clicking arrow to direct you to the next photo is easy, but I think that presenting these photos in more of a slideshow technique would have been a little better, maybe with some transitions here and there. And since they are pictures of different cultures, it would have been neat to put in some music from those countries, and maybe have a bit of narration from the photographer. I suppose that I was thinking a little bit of the New York Times slideshow about the bike tour through New York City. That sort of technique I think would really have made the most of the pictures displayed here.

I do think that photo gallaries are an interesting alternative to showing the news versus package or using video footage. To me, the point of a picture is capturing a moment in time forever, freezing it. You could either gain a little or lose a little with motion video because with motion you get context. Watching a slideshow of pictures, or even just clicking to the next picture seems like the viewer is more in charge, as is the theme of the web. I think having a photo gallary on a site is a useful and great option to showing the news, and that we should definitly make sure to include them in our website.