Just like marriage

I went through most of the POY award winning multimedia entries in a few hours - all of them are excellent works. Still, I have my preference: the First Place of Best Use of Multi-Media / Interactive Publication: Large Media of 62nd POY, The 2004 Campaign in Pictures of Photography on NYTimes.com:2004 produced by NYTimes.com, impressed me most.

This series of multimedia works has a diversity of its audio clips. It has photographers' narrative to introduce the election and provide the background information; it includes the original audio records of speeches and presidential debates in an elaborate timeline; it also contains the sound tracks of interviews of citizens on the streets. These different kinds of audios compose a lifelike scene of election campaigns to readers. In addition, it also applies various skills on the visual communication by using pictures – single-frame pictures and slide shows, maps and charts, which create a comprehensive picture for the election to the audiences. I really appreciate the efforts that the crew made to tell the story in such a multi-dimensional way.

Having browsed most of these multimedia works, I feel that the composition of pictures and audios have the same rules with marriage: 1 plus 1 is not always equal to 2. Good pictures and good audio may not beome combinations, just like good persons may not make happy marriages. The best couples of multimedia entries, as well as marriages, come from BOTH similarities and differences: similarities to be matched, and difference to be complementary to tell the whole story of life.