In a PechaKucha, you have to use twenty images. You could use some text as well, but it's better to use just images. When you use text the audience starts reading and they will pay less attention to you and your story. The focus should be on you and the image should support your story, not the other way around. Another advantage of images is they can touch emotions and pull people in your story. Added text will only distract them. We'll explain in this task where you can get good pictures.
There are many ways to get good pictures. Roughly, the options are:
- Hire a photographer
- Buy high quality pictures
- Make your own pictures
- Collect pictures from the Internet
The first option is very expensive and requires good planning. You won't use this option for your PechaKucha. The second option is an easy one. You only have to pick, pay, and use. The pitfall of stock pictures is that the audience recognizes them as stock pictures. Maybe they are too perfect. For PechaKucha, the best option is to make your own pictures. There are three reasons for this: it's cheap, personal, and fun.
The audience wants you to tell your personal story. This works best if your pictures are also personal. Made by you.
Nowadays, everyone has a mobile phone. The quality is (mostly) very good, so you can use these pictures for your presentation without any doubt.
It's even more fun to use your own pictures for your presentation than those beautiful stock photos because your own pictures are more personal and even the not-so-perfect-shots are nice to watch. It's also much cheaper and you have nothing to do with copyright (because you have the copyright over these pictures), which makes it much easier.
The last option is to download pictures from the Internet. It's a good alternative, but it's tricky. You have to make sure you don't violate any copyright rules. It's not always visible if you can use a particular picture.
Though your own photos may not be perfect, that doesn't mean they should be of low quality. Make sure a picture has a width of height of at least 1000 pixels. Then the quality is good enough to show the photo fullscreen. This is easy to test on your own computer screen. If the image is still sharp when it fills your entire screen, it will be sharp during the presentation. You can also check the width and height of the image by clicking on the right mouse button and choosing Properties (for Windows) or Get Info (for Mac).
For PechaKuchas, it's a good idea to use your own personal photos. It's cheap, personal, and good fun. Use photos of at least 1000 pixels wide/high.