Thursday 3 May 2007

Album Designs

I love designing albums for clients. I have just finished one for Mark & Jon this week and it prompted me to post about my various designs.

I use photoshop to design my albums, working up layers and using backgrounds to really tell the story of the wedding day as it unfolded. I ask the bride and groom to choose their favourites (and any they don't want collaged) for the album and then I design it - I rarely have changes, but do allow up to 5 changes for free (changes sometimes take longer to do than the original design !!).

There are 3 formats I work with - landscape, portrait and square.

Here are a couple of pages from an album I designed last May - this was for a mammoth 16x12 inch black leather album - in landscape format. This is the opening page (I managed to prize the rings from the best man and placed them on a church pew a few moments before the bride arrived) ...


This next one is a sequence taken after they signed the register - they had forgotten I was there and were larking around - then Will spotted me ! The background is a shot of their order of service.


I always use an 'opener' to my albums - this is usually a symbolic shot with some text - very simple - just names and date. This was for a wedding in Rugeley last September - the album was black portrait A4 size with black mounted pages ...

I always place the bride's hands over the grooms - they are usually much prettier :) This is another one from the same album - you can see I use a similar style but I like to make each album unique ...


The bride had seen a similar 'jumping' shot in a magazine and so we just had to give it a go - with amusing results.

The next one was for a couple who live across the road from me (we didn't know that on the first phone call) and we have all become firm friends since. The album was cream, square format, with cream pages and Jan chose a lovely red leather box to protect it. She just picked it up this week and is delighted with it.

The beauty with square format is that you can have any format of image and you can look at it without turning the album around ...


This is a landscape image with some text. Equally, I can use portrait images, either singular like the above page, or in a sequence ...


Another idea is to have a page of little images - this one is from the same album - they are all nice shots of guests etc but you would not necessarily have any of them in a larger size in the album so this way you get them all in !

Another favourite layout of mine is a 4 image sequence - here are a couple of examples from 2 weddings this year ... the first is of Nicole who was swirling around in front of the mirror admiring her dress and getting excited about getting married in 20 minutes time - I just chatted and shot and these were the results ...


Or, as in this next example, this is useful for showcasing the details ...


Gill x

2 comments:

  1. Think I've seen that first one before.

    I'm sure it 'rngs' a bell

    :-)))

    ReplyDelete
  2. I meant 'rings' a bell.

    (Bad spellers of the world untie) :-)

    ReplyDelete

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