I'm generally averse to JS-heavy presentations but I wouldn't consider this "crappy" -- in fact, I think this might be the best usecase/justification of such a format that I've yet seen, and this includes the NYT's Pulitzer-winning Snow Fall [0].
The JS in the NatGeo story is used for certain important and dramatic effects, such as the transition from a full page photo of the patient's original face, to the x-ray after her suicide attempt, to what her face looked like after the 22 reconstruction surgeries. The JS allows for as graceful a transition as possible while forcing the user to see the entirety of each of the faces. Scrolling through the photos with a standard vertical scroll would not have the same effect. Nor would a static layout of the 3 photos side by side (since they'd have to be drastically scaled down in size).
As you said, the subject matter is gruesome. The photos are best seen each all at once, as they would on a magazine print page. The JS for the feature works as a pretty good digital replacement for a physical page turn, IMO.
The JS in the NatGeo story is used for certain important and dramatic effects, such as the transition from a full page photo of the patient's original face, to the x-ray after her suicide attempt, to what her face looked like after the 22 reconstruction surgeries. The JS allows for as graceful a transition as possible while forcing the user to see the entirety of each of the faces. Scrolling through the photos with a standard vertical scroll would not have the same effect. Nor would a static layout of the 3 photos side by side (since they'd have to be drastically scaled down in size).
As you said, the subject matter is gruesome. The photos are best seen each all at once, as they would on a magazine print page. The JS for the feature works as a pretty good digital replacement for a physical page turn, IMO.
[0] http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/index.html