Stunning wedding albums

 

A friend yesterday asked me if I wanted to see the photos of her wedding day, her face lit up when I very excitedly said yes! (I Love seeing wedding albums!) We went in to the sitting room and there on the coffee table was a beautiful leather wedding album!

 In this age when you are asked 'would you like to see my photos' this normally means a laptop will come out, so seeing a beautifully crafted wedding photo album was like a breath of fresh air!

Although I’m not surprised that most couples balk at album prices—most people don’t know what goes into making them (!)—a wedding album is really the finishing point of your investment in your wedding photography.

So what goes in to your album?

I. The Labor

I like to think about the album making process as a labor of love.  It is certainly laborious—even a simple album can sometimes run upwards of thirty hours of labor.  Custom books can amount to much, much more work.  So what goes into making an album that can add up to so much time? Well, here goes:

2. Design time.

This is a big one.  Perhaps it’s the big one with custom albums.  Album design is a back and forth process—and sometimes a long one—a collaboration between a photographer and the clients.  Often, there are meetings.  There is always time laying the album out.  An opportunity for client feedback.  Changes to the design. Another opportunity for client feed back and/or a final approval.  Design time is all about decisions: decisions about which album(s) to use, which images will and won’t be included, how to tell the story of the wedding day and best flatter the bride and groom; decisions about making the best overall presentation, including choosing cover treatments (leather vs suede vs book cloth), cover photos, deciding on stamping or imprinting …

3. Editing images.

Once the images are chosen, and the client has “signed off” on the album design, the photographer begins preparing images to print.  Final color corrections need to be made.  Retouching issues need to be addressed.  The images need to be sized and cropped (if the album’s matted) or inserted into an overall layout (if the album is flush-mounted).

4. Ordering prints from the lab.

This seems pretty self-explanatory, but this often takes an hour or two depending on the album type.

5. Checking quality.

When the prints come back from the lab, the photographer check every single print to make sure it’s up to snuff.  If they don’t like a print, they have to send it back to the lab.

6. Assembling the prints & order forms.

 Prints have to be put in numerical and size order and sometimes hand-trimmed.  

7. Shipping or dropping the order off at the album bindery.

8. Checking quality again.

9. Shipping or dropping the album off to the client.  (Phew!)