Norway 2007

[Almark]

In December 2007 my wife and I went on the 'Coastal Voyage' from Bergen, Norway, to the North Cape and back again. We were on board the MS Trollfjord, part of the Hurtigruten fleet. Once you go above the arctic circle ii is dark all day, although if there are no clouds in the sky you can get an errie blueness that is difficult to describe (but can be seen in the AV). The Northern Lights were on display but I found it really hard to take decent photos - the ship is moving, rocking and the wind sharp - not to mention the cold. So I only have two decent images of the 'Lights'.

We were caught in a warm storm near the North Cape and had to anchor in a fjord and wait it out. Sadly the warm rain washed away most of the snow and ice and instead of the expected -15C it was 5C.

http://www.markallenphotography.co.uk/mark...ies/norway3.zip

[dpeterso]

In December 2007 my wife and I went on the 'Coastal Voyage' from Bergen, Norway, to the North Cape and back again.

http://www.markallenphotography.co.uk/mark...ies/norway3.zip

Mark -

If this show is your first post, it certainly is not your first show. You've done a marvelous job here. The pictures were great! I really liked your skills with the low-light shots. You and a camera must be long time friends. I liked the turning page at the beginning and the end, and I normally don't care for any transitions other than fade. The music was moving and powerful, making the show very enjoyable.

The only thing I'd like to see different is the view on my computer. The show didn't fill the screen and covered only part of my background. Plus, there was a blue bar on the top of your presentation with the "-" and "X" in the upper right corner. These things are merely technical issues that can easily fixed, I think.

All in all though, I was impressed and I'm keeping your show to show my wife. She'll like it too. It's so nice to travel the world with other people's cameras and music.

Regards,

Dave

[Almark]

Good points Dave, thanks for taking the time to download it. I bought my first DSLR just over a year ago to see if photography would be a suitable hobby for retirement. As a web designer the computer side of digital photography has always been easy to learn. Capture NX is what I use for raw adjustment. I have been making AV's since I bought the DSLR, and while I started on PTE I somehow got sidetracked to ProShow. I am now back with PTE as I think it produces a truer saturation and I am convinced it is sharper as well.

The images in this show were taken with a Nikon D300, (an early Christmas present to myself) the one of the husky dogs pulling the sleigh was taken in the light of the guys head-torch, hand-held at ISO 6400. The blue harbour scenes were taken in darkness at ISO 3200.

Re your points. I have made the show border-less, but sadly it must be in a window because when I set it to full screen it doesn't run right, at least not on my laptop. I will have to play with it again and see what I can do. I have updated the show and re upped it to the Net, some details - I removed some black bars top and bottom, and moved the sun in the reflection of one ship window so that it is in exactly the same position (in another ship window) on the next image.

I agree with you about the page curl and the beginning and end. I too have always favoured the simple fade in out. But a friend from my camera club showed me this and suggested I copy the the trolls from the beginning to the end. First curl goes bottom right to top left and the last one the opposite - a sort of opening and closing so to speak.

BTW, did you get the link between the music and Norway? Maybe a bit cryptic, but have a go.

Update, the full screen version refuses to work on my 1920x1440 laptop but does work on a 1280x? desktop PC. Will upload it (again) shortly.

Update: the zip file has been updated, now works full screen.

http://www.markallenphotography.co.uk/mark...ies/norway3.zip

[Lin Evans]

Hi Mark,

Beautiful imagery, photography and presentation. I really like the music which has both a Celtic and northern flavor. The full screen version (which is the one I see today on the download) plays perfectly for me. The "only" thing I would change is to straighten the horizon on about slide 8 or 9 depending on whether you count from the opening page turn or first slide.

You've captured the very somber mood of this lovely place. I can see why SAD (seasonal affective disorder) might be prevalent. This reminds me of lengthy times I spent in northern Alaska where you begin to go slightly nuts from lack of sun. The Inuits there sometimes have a disorder similar to what in Algonquian culture is called Windigo Psychosis where a craving for human flesh is supposedly caused by mythological giants (Windigo's). One must suspect that prolonged deprivation from the sun must have strange effects on human behavior.

In any event you did a first rate job with this and your new D300 didn't let you down either!

Best regards,

Lin

[dpeterso]

Update, the full screen version refuses to work on my 1920x1440 laptop but does work on a 1280x? desktop PC. Will upload it (again) shortly.

Update: the zip file has been updated, now works full screen.

http://www.markallenphotography.co.uk/mark...ies/norway3.zip

Mark -

Now it plays full screen for me. Much better! One last thing to fix: the show won't end on its own; I have to hit the escape key to get out. Unless the effect was intentional, here's how to fix it:

Project Options

Main

Show Settings

Close Show After Last Slide

Best regards,

Dave

[Almark]

Lin, thanks for your kind comments. I used the music from the Lord of the Rings as I thought people might mentally link the music to the beautiful scenery and fjords of New Zealand. Re the horizon, I will definitely check but many of the images were taken from the ship and sometimes because of the way the land lies it may look wonky. Thanks for taking the time to look.

Dave, again thanks for downloading and having another look. I have set it like that as in our camera club we normally answer a few questions after showing the presentation, so I wanted to leave it up - rather than someone's desktop being shown.

Funny thing is, I can't run this on my laptop, works fine on a much older desktop, but not on my whizz bang laptop ;-)

[alrobin]

Mark,

Welcome to the Forum! I enjoyed the presentation of your Norway adventure, and particularly liked the way the music accentuated the mood around the appearance of daylight and the sunrise behind the mountains. You were very fortunate to capture the Northern Lights, too, especially from the deck of a moving ship! Will look forward to more of your productions.

Re the laptop, I run a program called "EndItAll" to clear out all the processes running in the background (typically this amounts to 25 or 30 non-essential programs!). I find if I close all of these that the transitions in slideshows from version 5 are much smoother. One source for "EndItAll 2" is http://www.docsdownloads.com/Tier1/enditall.htm .

[neil]

Mark,

This is great stuff,I am going to watch a second time when I have more time tomorrow.

All the Best

Neil

[jfa]

I enjoyed your show very much Mark, thank for posting. A part of the planet I have never seen.

Good images and your skill with the low-light photography is excellent. The audio was also a good choice matching the images well. The high ISO used in some shots did produce some noticable noise in the images but this was minor and didn't detract from the show.

Thanks again, and welcome to the forum, more AVs to come in the future I hope.

[neil]

Hello Mark,

I have just watched your show again and enjoyed it very much,the opening was really impressive and the music went superbly.I also liked the slow fades.But the thing that I was most keen on was the way you had slides or images that went into each other with such great style ( for lack of a better word).I am having big probs. with my machine at the moment.But I hope to see more of your work soon.

All the Best

Neil

[Almark]

Thank you all for your kind and welcoming comments.

Al, thank you I will try that program and see if it helps.

John, thank you for your feedback, I was concerned about the noise, but as these were taken in the dark, handheld, I agree with you the noise is understandable and acceptable.

Neil, watched it twice eh! Well thank you for taking the time, I spent some time arranging the images so that they sometimes blend to create a 3rd image. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't.

I attended a local AV workshop today and received more useful feedback. So there will be a new version coming soon and one with audio commentary as well.

[Guest Dick Le Bleu]

Hi Mark!

I have to live with dialup internet connection here in my part of the country, so I have to choose carefully when downloading slideshows.

I just had to tell you how pleased I was with the one hour+ download of your slideshow on Norway!

Thank you very much for your presentation! What a travelog!

Dick

[Almark]

Dick, in that case thank you so much for taking time - over an hour - to download this pte. I take you wait and see what folk say about a show before you take the plunge? Very wise!

I am glad you liked it, I am preparing a different version with narration, but I find that adding narration is much harder than i thought!

[Almark]

show and zip updated to reflect feedback. Thank you, I think it looks much better.

http://www.markallenphotography.co.uk/mark...ies/norway3.zip