A picture is worth a thousand words, but a couple of hundred pictures can make for a priceless family experience. The Propes Family has a reunion every June at the Community Center in Henderson, Texas. It's a big old room, and we set up 20 or 30 tables and have a potluck. Some years, folks come from the Georgia branch of the family; most years, somebody comes from out of state. We enjoy the fellowship.

I've been printing a family tree chart for some time, and people come and mark changes on it as the different Propeses get married, have children, get divorced, get married again, or just spot my mistakes. The last few years I've been adding pictures to the chart using Legacy. People are usually shocked to see pictures of themselves from 30 or 40 years ago showing up on the wall at the reunion. The kids love to see their names and pictures on the wall; it's a good way to teach them that they have their own place in the family. Some years we encourage them to sign by the box with their name on it. We lose a few pens, but it's worth it.

We put the laptop over on a table to the side one year. We used the Windows slide show--the one where it goes through the photos from a given folder. That was okay, but the year after that was the 50th reunion, and for that occasion we decided to do something special.

We got a projector, and used the slide show from Legacy on my laptop to project pictures on the wall most of the afternoon. We set it up so they showed really high on the wall, like a movie screen, bigger than life. The pictures moved across the wall at different speeds, and different sizes, at random. Current photos mixed with old photos, and those mixed with really old photos of people who had been gone for many years. They've held that reunion in that same room for so many years that it seemed like all of my aunts and uncles and grandparents were looking down on us from that place on the wall.

Lots of things have to fall into place for a good family reunion, but I thought the slide show really helped.

Creating Your Computer Slide Show
To make a computer slide show, you need three ingredients: pictures, software, and presentation.

Most everybody has some pictures. Gather up photos of living relatives and ancestors. The combination will make both sets look better. I think that the more you have, the better it is. If you have less than a hundred, look for some more. Then go for two hundred. But don't get so many that you'll never see the same picture twice. I like to see them come back around a few times.

For software, you have choices in two categories: genealogy programs and slide show programs. You can make slide shows with The Master Genealogist (TMG), Family Tree Maker, Legacy, and probably every other one, but you'll have to check to be sure. There is a comparison chart on the website for TMG (www.whollygenes.com/tmg5.htm) that shows various slide show features for different programs. One advantage to using a genealogy program is that the program keeps track of where the picture files are, so that they don't have to be in a single folder. Another advantage is that you don't have to do any preparation, just turn it on. And finally, the pictures match the ones in the family tree that you printed and taped up on the wall.

Slide show programs, on the other hand, present different features. The generic slide show that can be run from Windows Explorer, or from the screen saver, can do a nice job of making random dissolves between images, and resizing them all to fill the screen. Maybe it's just me, but photos in random order are much more interesting than the same sequence over and over. But there's a time when you might want exactly that.

You might want to create a highly structured slide show. Maybe you'll want to go up or down a family tree. And perhaps you'd like to include some text--either as captions or as animated “pop-up video” balloons. Maybe you'd like for the photos to be framed in diamonds, triangles, circles, hearts, hexagons, and to have not only cool shapes but also interesting frames. If that's your thing, you want to use Microsoft PowerPoint. You can have complete control over the time a slide is on the screen, and over slide transitions such as dissolves, blinds, wipes, and the like.

PowerPoint can create a slide show “photo album” for you that includes whatever images you select. You can show it with random transitions and specify that each slide will be on the screen for a certain time--3 to 5 seconds works for me. You can even put music with your presentations, and change songs on certain slides. If you have any kind of a story-telling function at your reunion, slides can help.

Your Presentation might be a “kiosk” or a big deal with a projector. The projectors are really expensive to buy and rent, but almost everyone has access to one anymore. Maybe you can borrow one from work--the marketing types are usually out the door by 4:55 on Friday and don't show up ‘til about 10 on Mondays. They'd never miss it.

Don't stop being creative just thinking of family reunions. This is a great way to spice up a class reunion, too. Next time you have a reunion or family gathering, think about adding pictures to the event. It's one of the best ways to invite your ancestors to join you.

More Information
For links and more information about slide shows, please see the RootsWorks site at www.rootsworks.com/slideshow. If you want to discuss your family reunion slide show challenges, please drop by the RootsWorks Forums at www.rootsworks.com/forums. Registration is free, and I'd be interested to know what kinds of issues you are facing.

Beau Sharbrough is a product manager at Ancestry.com. His articles contain his own views and opinions and do not reflect any corporate policy or statement by the company. The RootsWorks series of articles focuses on genealogical applications for generic technologies. Beau would like to hear from you. Stop by www.rootsworks.com/forums and discuss this or any topic related to the use of technology in family history. Tell us about your experiences. Please note that Beau cannot assist you with your individual computer and genealogy problems. Visit the RootsWorks website (www.rootsworks.com) for links to previous articles and Beau's lecture schedule (next stop: the Utah Valley PAF Users Group in June).

Copyright 2004, MyFamily.com.