Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Sample Wedding Album Design



I was just tweeting about how I sent my first wedding album order in yesterday and it brought me back to when I was first starting to try to design this album. Album design is a scary and difficult thing to do. You want to try to tell the story of the wedding day the way that you saw it through your lens. You painstakingly shoot details, anticipate moments, and capture heartfelt emotion on the wedding day. Then you rush back to download correct and process all off your images.

Then, one of two things happens. Either you get to the album design bursting with ideas or you stare blankly at the screen and feel dread creep up into your guts. I am contemplating the idea of outsourcing my album designs because the thought of doing the designs does bring out a bit of dread in me, but for this particular album I did the design myself. Now I know that I can do it and the fear is a little less. When I was staring blankly at the computer screen I was really wishing that I could have seen what other people were doing so that I could get some ideas. In that spirit I have decided to post my layouts here for all of you to see.

A few things to note: the wedding was done with a second shooter so I did not push the shutter for every image that you will see. I thought it only fair that I throw that out as a disclaimer. A lot of photographers use second shooters and many of them do not tell you whose pictures are whose but unless you specifically request a second shooter, if you hire me, I am the one taking every single shot.

Next, this is not a sample album. This is a real album for a real bride. Why do I point this out? Because sample albums are not reality. Real brides want pictures of everyone in the wedding in their albums. For a sample album I would not include 80% of the family pictures. Why? Because a prospective bride does not care about pictures of someone else's grandparents. I would also be more selective in my sample albums and choose the images that I feel will appeal to the target client I want to book. In real albums bride's will like some pictures that honestly are not very stunning for emotional reasons (which is great because it means that I am doing my job right!) but someone who does not have that emotional connection just see the photo as an okay image. Just something to keep in mind when selecting images for samples vs. client albums.

Lastly, I am showing you two covers. The tan one is the one that I designed first. The blue one is the one that the bride selected. Keep in mind that it is not your wedding and what you want often gets shelved. Try not to take it personally.
Here we go! Let me know what you think!






































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