Presentation Photo Pizzaz (Kodak Blog, November 2007)

NOTE: This is a “reprint” of my blog post to Kodak’s previous “A Thousand Words” blog.

Patterns and images are all around us and they make it really easy to add a little pizzaz, visual interest and personality to a presentation (e.g., a presentation such as one created in Microsoft PowerPoint).  For example, here are a few slides that I created with some of my pictures:

background 1 background 2
background 3 background 4

I used pictures from the garden, the close-up of a pattern on a throw pillow, and a close-up of a sweater to capture these patterns.  You could go to a free or paid online service to find similar pictures to add to your presentations, but why not look around you and capture your own?  A bowl of fruit, the grass outside, floor tiles, etc. – they all have the potential to add some visual interest to your presentation.

When I traveled to Ireland, I took pictures of floor tiles from a church.  You don’t have to use the whole picture, but you can crop a picture and use it along an edge of your slide like this:

slide example

One tip to note about incorporating images into a presentation, however, is that you should either decrease the resolution of the image ahead of time or use options in your presentation software to compress the images contained in your presentation.  If you don’t do this, you could end up with a very large file!

What about you, how do you use images in your presentations to convey information and visual interest?

Posted in kodak_blog, photography.