Capturing the memories of a wedding day is a pretty stressy event for a most photographers. We are given the honour of recording a special day in a couple’s life. Capturing the memories is one thing, presenting them is another.

Increasingly people are opting to make their own photo albums, something that up until recently was never heard of. In the analogue days, photos would be printed individually from the precious negatives and individually pasted into a large album. Digital imaging came along, rapid and cheap printing soon followed, more recently a host of consumer digital photo book suppliers started popping up. Anyone could design and make an album with free software, upload files to the supplier and within a week sit in the couch browsing a photo book.

I’ve always been proud to say that I print all my own photos, trim and mount them into hand-made photo albums. To make my albums a little fresher and cleaner, I don’t print lots of individual photos and then paste them, I carefully select photos and make layouts that cover a complete album page, print as one print and then paste into the album. With this technique I produce a finished album of 40x30cm, around 40 pages and weighs in at about 3kg. The final product represents a story of the full day, it takes a lot of time and passion to produce and is something I’m always proud to present to the couple.

To move even more into the digital trends of today I’ve been looking for a way of producing a digital photo album that offers all of the qualities I so cherish in my hand-made albums, plus a fresher feel, less delicate feel. These are qualities that no high-street or consumer digital book company can offer. I needed a specialist to print and custom make the albums.

The resulting album is finished in the same textured synthetic leather I use on my traditional albums and is even supplied in a hard linnen covered box. The main difference being, the pages are in fact constructed from photos, bonded back to back. the photos are full-bleed which means they run to the edge of every page, every page folds totally flat and each of the pages is protected with an invisible laminate. The result is the same 40x30cm page format with the additional advantage of being easier to handle than the traditional album, full 80cm wide layouts and no more protection sheets needed between pages.

So from my point of view, someone who is his own worst critic, these new products I offer are certainly not just another wedding album.

Included are some details of the finished album. Plus the full content of Jo & Hilde’s wedding album, in full “wide layout” glory.


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