My Highlights of 2012 Slideshow

Making my annual family slideshow for 2012 monopolized tons of my time in December. This was my fourth year making a family sideshow, and each year my slideshows have gotten bigger and better. I'm glad my skills have improved, but that means it takes even longer to put my slideshows together. I'm not exactly sure how many total hours I spent working on my slideshow, but I estimate that I devoted anyway between 50 and 75 hours perfecting it.

I usually get my slideshow done before Christmas, but this year it took extra long. I'm not quite sure why it took me so much longer this year, but I finally finished it. I decided that New Year's Eve would be the perfect time for my slideshow "premier" since several of my family members were around. Unfortunately, three of my sisters and their families weren't around for the holidays since they live so far away, but I sent them DVDs of the sideshow so that they can watch it with their families. Anyway, I think my slideshow was a hit with everyone that watched it because everyone seemed to like it. The slideshow really was quite a "show" as it was 30 minutes long. Hopefully no one thought it was too long. I find it really difficult to keep it short when I have so many great pictures to work with, especially when each picture means so much to me. I get really attached to the pictures because I adore the people in them and I love the stories behind each picture.

I had somewhere between 2000 and 2500 pictures to sift through as I was trying to decide which pictures made the cut. (I have a large family and most of my sisters take lots of pictures, so that's why I had so many pictures to choose from.) Narrowing down the pictures takes quite a bit of time, but that's okay. I like options and I rather have to sift through hundreds and hundreds of nice pictures instead of having to settle for mediocre pictures because that's all I have.

I uploaded my sideshow to YouTube to make it easy to share with my family and friends.  Sometimes when I watch videos on YouTube they can be sluggish/shaky in spots, so hopefully if you watch it it will respond appropriately and run smoothly. (I had to split the slideshow into two parts to make uploading it to YouTube easier since it's so long.) If you watch it, please let me know if you think!

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLR3QellodA

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tpa7halj2NI