Slideshow response

The New York Time’s slideshow entitled Melissa Dixson: The Urban Taxidermist was great with and without audio. The pictures show clearly a story, with a beginning, middle and an end. Not only is the story visually interesting, it is also unique and compelling to watch. Like the other slideshows produced by the New York Times, the individuality and rare story offered by the subject is precisely what makes it newsworthy. Melissa’s story, like doing a story on a funeral director or someone who embalms human bodies, is compelling because people are always interested to know what exactly it is these kind of people do.
I first watched the slideshow with no sound and I could see what her job was and where it started. The first still shot is of a squirrel, which brought me to believe it was something important to her beginning as a taxidermist. After listening to the slideshow, it turns out it was the first animal she “cut open.” The first shot was crucial, in that it didn’t show just any dead animal, it was relevant to Melissa’s story, but it was also cute, which opened the audience base - versus having an animal half cut open or vicious looking.
I loved the photographers use of both dead and alive animals. Towards the end of the slideshow there is a picture of a deer looking out of the New York City studio and a bird is soaring over the buildings. Ironically the bird could end up in Melissa’s hands. Immediately following, is a picture of a cat rubbing up against deer antlers. In the voiceover, Melissa is saying she doesn’t do pets and goes on to explain the type of phone calls she has received from various pet owners. Not only does the picture fit brilliantly into what she’s saying but the picture is also really neat - the movement of the cat is familiar and as the audience you can almost see it walking up to the inanimate object and rubbing its face all the way down to its tail.
The pictures, like Melissa says about her job, makes the audience stare death in the face. In the case of the wildcat skin hanging on the wall and the wolf with open jaws, the photos are honest and almost unnerving at some points and yet the picture of the small baby deer on the shelf next to a collection of butterflies is beautiful and one has an appreciation for the work Melissa does. By providing a range of perspectives for the viewer, the photographer not only allowed the magnitude of the story to be told but did so in an honest and creative way. From the general photos, which showed her whole studio, down to the plant in the corner with the bunny poking it’s head out, the photographer did a great job of showing the large picture as well as the smaller subcomponents that make Melissa’s story worth telling and thus worth watching.
I loved that the photos were in black and white - it adds a timeless feature to them, however, you can still see the good use of angle and light, or shading, in the pictures.