When we signed our boys up to swim that first year it was explained that parents needed to help out at the swim meets as timers, judges, and with setting up and cleaning up. That first year I had the bright idea that it would be much more entertaining to offer my services to take pictures at all the meets and then to make a slideshow for the end of season swim team banquet.
What was I thinking? It would have been FAR EASIER to be a timer! But nevertheless, that has been my job on the swim team since then. Last year it came in handy--the coaches wanted Rachel, Jenna, and Jared to swim but we couldn't afford to pay the fees for 5 kids. They offered us a 2 kid discount because of the amount of time I spend working on the slideshow. Later they asked if I would be willing to take the individual pictures of all of the kids so that it could be a swim team fund raiser instead of a personal fund raiser for a local photographer. This summer we're operating on reduced pay because of the economy and they were again willing to let us pay for half of our swimmers in return for the work I do. So guess who's making another slideshow...
I actually really like making slideshows. I made my first one about 6 or 7 years ago for my dad for Father's day, and have made many since then. They're tedious to make and they take a long time, but there's something very satisfying to me in the synergistic combination of pictures and music.
One of the hardest things about making a slideshow, especially a long one like the swim team slideshow (usually 10-12 minutes) is picking the music.
My parameters are:
- not sexual
- preferably not even about romance/love
- no profanities
- something that won't kill me to listen to over & over & over again!
It would of course be fun to have music that was even slightly thematic, but I think I exhausted all of those options long ago. We've used "Splish Splash", "Breathe", and various Beach Boys songs including an original re-worded version of "Kokomo" that named all of the different swim teams that we swim against.
I always like to end with a feel good song, and I'm happy to say that for the last 4 years I have found a foolproof source for my feel good song.
"Where?" you may ask.
American Idol. More specifically, the final American Idol song. I don't usually even watch American Idol (my memory isn't good enough) but each year when I check out the last song it is easy on the ears and leaves me feeling good.
Sure enough, this morning I logged onto my computer and started searching to find out what song the winner of American Idol sang. I had to refine my google search a couple of times to finally find it, but finally I did.
If you haven't already heard it, I've embedded a video at the bottom that you can listen to. And I'm going to get started on my feel-good swim team slideshow!
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