Do-It-Yourself Photo Montage for Your Wedding or Special Event
You’ve seen them at countless weddings and special events, a photo “love story” or “history” set to music and played on a big screen, often called a photo montage. In days past, a photo montage cost hundreds of dollars and was produced at professional video and photography studios. Now, thanks to inexpensive software and powerful home computers, the average person can produce their own photo montage and burn it to CD or DVD.
Numerous programs are available for purchase and many even come with the software bundled on your computer or with your camera. Most of these programs are easy to use, simply drag and drop the photos onto the timeline, specify a transition and timing, add music and narration and export your photo montage to disc. Not only can you show the photo montage on a big screen (provided you burned it to video or disc), you can make screensavers as well.
When creating a photo montage to show at a wedding or a special event, it’s best to keep it short and simple. Even if you have shoeboxes and a hard drive full of photos, it doesn’t mean you have to show them all.
For a love story style photo montage, you will want to show pictures from both the bride and the groom’s childhoods, pictures of them together and finally end with a picture of their wedding invitation or engagement announcement. Be picky. Choose the photos that best illustrate the personalities of the couple. If the groom is a college football player, it might be cute to include a picture of him as a toddler holding a football, or of the bride as a toddler dressed in a cheerleader outfit.
If you see a theme as you go through the pictures, you might want to take advantage of it and play it up in the photo montage. For example, suppose the bride has a bunch of photos of herself wearing various boots. You could make a little scene set to Nancy Sinatra’s “These boots are made for walking” song. That’s just a silly little example but be open to the possibilities that might present themselves.
Once you have gathered the pictures you’d like in the photo montage, you must get them into your computer. You can either scan them or you could use a digital camera. Crop the photos so that the image fills the screen and cut out unnecessary background elements. Just about any photo can be improved with selective cropping.
Now that the photos are on the computer, open the software and drag and drop the photos into place. Choose how long to display each photo. Between five and seven seconds works nicely depending on the transition length used. You want to be able to view the picture long enough to enjoy it but at the same time you don’t want to feel “stuck” on a image.
The music you use in the photo montage will give you an idea on pacing and transitions. If you’re using a slow, romantic song, you will want to use slow transitions where the pictures blend into each other, called a dissolve. For a more upbeat song, you will speed up the transition and may even simply cut between photos. Be careful of overdoing transitions and effects in the photo montage. While the program may have hundreds of transitions, avoid the temptation to show off and use them all. The end result is a visual bombardment. Instead, pick and choose. Use dissolves and cuts to your heart’s content and then choose just one other effect to use between segments. For example, use the “page turn” effect when you transition from the bride growing up to the groom growing up and then again when you transition to their dating photos and a final page turn to their wedding invitation. This visual cue tells the audience that we’re moving on to a different section.
Find out what song the couple plans to use for their first dance and consider using that song as the final song of the photo montage.
Fade to black and burn the photo montage to disc. You’re done.
