The hustle and bustle of modern life causes people to seek an escape from it all and go on vacations. While the frequency of a vacation will vary, most people enjoy their time off. After having a gala time, it is understandable that you will want to share the same with your peers. One of the best ways of doing so is to create your travel slideshow.
Understand that when you get back from a vacation, you carry souvenirs and photographs from the place. These are tangible memories of the place, and you associate an emotion with each such photo or video. For example, when you see a picture of your child playing on the beach, it triggers memories of the conversations you had there and the tender coconut juice that you sipped. However, when you share such photos with your friends and family, they see just the image. All the other feelings that you associate with the photo do not exist for them. This makes the photograph less valuable.
To ensure that your friends and family enjoy the pictures from your trip, you need to collate the best pics and make them into a slideshow. That way, the viewer does not lose patience browsing through countless unsorted images. Creating a stellar travel slideshow demands meticulous planning, and you need to put thought into what you want to achieve with such a video. Here is a step-by-step guide to creating an eye-catching travel slideshow.
Step 1: Select the Photos
The most important factor in your slideshow is the choice of pictures. Take time to review all your photos and pick the best ones. Double-check your selection to make sure that you do not have any duplicate pictures or blurry ones. Avoid pictures where the subject is not clear, or focus is improper.
Understand that the average viewer of today has a short attention span, and if your video is unreasonably long, you will have a high drop-off rate. That is why it is a good idea to restrict the length of your travel slideshow to 5 minutes.
For your viewers to register the video content, ideally, you should give them 5 seconds on each side. A transition of 2 seconds between consecutive slides works the best. Hence, under no situation should you have more than 40 videos in your slide to accommodate in the 5-minute bracket. It is a good idea to sit with your family members and decide on the pictures that go to the slideshow.
Step 2: Do Not Make It All About Yourself
While we understand your urge to show off a wonderful vacation, your viewers will not be keen to see you boasting about it. To ensure better reception of your travel slideshows, do not take a narcissistic approach. For example, try to replace images of you having fun at fancy pubs with ones where you meet local people.
If you have captured landscape images or close-up shots of locals smiling at the camera, add that to your slideshow video. Interesting local customs and unique identities of the place that you visited add authenticity to your travel slideshow. That way, the viewers will have something of value to take away from your video.
Step 3: Set the Ambience with Music
The reason for the immense popularity of videos is the fact that it appeals to the visual as well as the audio senses of an individual. You can improve the appeal of your travel videos by adding music. The kind of destination that you visited, your mood at the time of travel, and the theme of the social media page where you intend to share the slideshow all play a deciding role in your choice of music. For example, tropical-themed music is a good choice for the travel slideshow of your leisurely beach trip. However, for your bungee jumping or trekking slideshow, we would recommend that you use dynamic music.
While adding music to your slideshow, take proactive measures to ensure that you stay on the right side of the law. Avoid using music that is copyright protected. When you use a video editing tool such as InVideo, you get access to a huge library of royalty-free music. Free to choose any music from such a collection.
Step 4: Add Special Effects
Today’s digital world is all about presentation. If the story of your trip is a series of boring events, chances are that the viewers will lose interest. To avoid such a thing, try to animate a portion of your story with special effects. For example, during the editing stage, you can focus on the important aspect of the frame and zoom into it.
That way, you will emphasize the important and interesting aspects of the video and make it more dramatic or hilarious. If you can add pan and zoom effects to your video or make use of transitions, it will improve the visual appeal of your video. The key to doing justice to the special effects of your travel slideshow is knowing how to draw the line between too little and too much.
Step 5: Make the Video
At the last stage, you need to assemble your travel slideshow and make it into a video file. Most video editing tools allow you to choose the format of your video. Try to save your file in MP4 format if you want HD quality slideshow. For a conventional playback, AVI format should suffice. After you choose the format, your editing tool will render the slideshow, and you can then export and download the file.
Such a systematic approach will allow you to share your stunning travel photos in the best possible manner. It will ensure the utmost value for time, as you will not need to invest efforts in creating the slideshow. Since it is action-packed content, the viewers will be fed with a lot of visual content in a short time span. That way, your social media followers will connect to the slideshow and will be in awe of the wonderful time that you spent.