Creating a slide show using Flickr

Flickr is a free photo sharing website - http://www.flickr.com/ - where any photographer can post their images.

For the heritage walk project I wanted to include a slide show of some of the sites in the walk so I wandered around the city, trying to avoid traffic and pedestrians, to take photos with a digital camera. It is amazing how many construction sites and signs there are in the city when you want to photograph a building. I am not a photographer but the images should give the viewer, especially those not going on the actual walk, a pictorial view of the walk.

I already had a Flickr account (Click the Create Your Account button, then follow the directions, on the Flickr website to create your own account) so I loaded the images into a new album on the Flickr site.

There are many ways that images on Flickr can be used including creating slide shows of your own images or other images on Flickr. I used the slide show generator on the website Big Huge Labs http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/slideshow.php.
The generator provides you with a string of text to include in your website to generate the slide show.

The result for the slide show for the first part of the heritage walk is -
Link to slide show:
Slide show can be viewed at View slideshow

OR

Button for slide show -

One of these links will be inserted into the Podcast page on the website together with the link to the Podcast file.

Editing the heritage walk podcast

Editing the audio files for the heritage walk podcast provided additional challenges. This project commenced in September and was the first project where I used Audacity so it was initially a steep learning curve. However, once I determined that the best way to learn was actually to practise on an audio file, make mistakes, experiment with different features of the program etc I realised that editing audio files could really be fun and there is always the Undo option to use if things do not go to plan. Of course the first thing to do is to make a copy of the original file so if a disaster occurs you can always start again.

Basic editing of audio files follows the same principles as editing a word document but instead of selecting a word or a section of text you select a section of the audio file (a series of wavy lines representing sounds) and then cut, copy, paste, duplicate, delete etc. When editing you listen to the sound and watch the lines, stop the program where an edit is required, edit the program and move on. Sections of the file can be removed completely or moved to another location in the file or into a separate file. Where there is an unwanted pause between sections of the recording - usually indicated by a straight line, part or all of the pause can be removed.

For this project I wanted to add a sound to indicate the end of a section of the walk so that a person using the podcast on a walk could pause the digital player until they arrived at the next place described in the recording. We located the sound of a chime which I then duplicated with a pause between each chime and copied and pasted the chime section wherever it was required.

I also wanted some music to use as part of the introduction to the heritage walk podcast so I investigated a number of sites on the Internet where music is freely available, chose a few bars of one piece and then manipulated it in Audacity to fade in and out to use at the beginning and end of the podcast. Ideally I would like to record a few bars of an original piece to use but that may come later.

When editing the project I decided that the initial walk as planned was too long and fell into two distinct areas so divided the project into two walks. The first part just needs an introduction recorded and added and then it will be ready to go on line. The second section still requires editing.

This project has taken much longer than first anticipated but it has been a good learning experience, particularly in transferring a project from one form of media to another. For instance when the chimes were inserted to indicate a break, clear directions to reach the next site needed to be given before the chimes. As there could be considerable distance between sites, the address of the site was repeated at the beginning of the new segment. The project is still being fine tuned but will be ready to go online when the podcast page is launched on the RHSV website, later this year.

Preparing a heritage walk as a podcast

Placing the RHSV lectures online was one project. Podcasts are increasingly used to provide information about exhibitions and also for creating self-guided walks.

During 2007 volunteers at the RHSV prepared an exhibition, History begins at home, which is still currently on display at the RHSV building, 239 A'Beckett Street, Melbourne. The exhibition looked at the buildings and sites surrounding the former Army Medical Drill Hall, part of which now houses the RHSV.

John was asked to prepare a heritage walk for the area and it was decided that one form that the walk could take would be to create a podcast of the walk. Putting the audio files online would allow people to download the audio files to their computer and either listen to the files at home or add them to a portable digital player such as an ipod and listen to the description of the sites while going on the walk.

All projects require a great deal of time in planning and research. John collected information about possible buildings and sites of interest to include in the walk and then prepared a draft map for the walk. He then tested the walk and spent time revising both the walk information and the route the walk was to take before the first recording was made.

This was our first experiment with such a project so we had a number of false starts as we learned to use equipment, work out the best and quietest part of the building to make the recording, establish that one of the chairs squeaked if the person sitting on it moved etc. There were also techniques to learn when recording, especially the speed at which to speak, and the ability to sound confident when recording the text.

The recording was made using a JNC digital recorder with a lapel microphone. A later recording of part of the walk was made using a microphone connected directly to the computer using Audacity.

The first recording made, I then tested the walk. Although I knew the content I had not previously undertaken the walk so I undertook the exercise as someone who knew little or nothing about the route. It soon became obvious that we needed to revise the project and include clearer directions on how to get from point A to Point B. The project had originally been designed as a pamphlet and although directions had been included in the version for the recording, in some places they would not have been clear to a person undertaking the walk. In any project - article or book, exhibition, website etc, the author / designer can become too close to the work so it is useful to have the work reviewed by another person providing another perspective to ensure that nothing has been omitted or might be clearer if expressed in a different way.

The text for the walk was revised and rerecorded and retested a number of times with input from a number of people. I was then ready to edit the audio files to use as a podcast.