Thoughts on album design

One of my winter projects has been working on album design. How on earth can you spend time actually studying album design? I hear you ask. Surely it’s a case of shooting a load of images and then just sticking them in a book?

Errm no, that’s not really how it works so let me go into a little more detail about how I think about albums. It is fundamental to understand certain principles like how our eyes actually move over pages. Top left to bottom right is normal for us here in the Western World so I won’t use a design that goes bottom left to top right. It is counter intuitive and therefore won’t sit right. So with the mechanics sorted ( there is a bit more to it than that but you get the idea) let’s get onto the shooting.

Firstly I want to know if the album is portrait, landscape or square because that will influence which way round I hold the camera for certain shots. I know, for example that the ring exchanges are going to be shot from the back of the venue so ¾ length and portrait will be best for a portrait album. If, however I want to use a ring exchange shot in a landscape or square album for a background on a double page spread, it’s best shot in landscape……see where I am going with this?

I actually have a very good idea what the final album will look like before I have even picked up the camera. This is what we call shooting for the album.

Same goes for bridal prep shots. Our bride has something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue? Great! That’s a page in the album. Four shots?…..nope make that eight. Shooting both ways round allows me to place those images anywhere I want for a 2 landscape/2 portrait page. I will also shoot all four with a very similar background so there are no overall distractions to the subjects.

On the subject of backgrounds it is also important when shooting images of our lovely couples to keep the images we want to use on facing pages of the same overall tone. There is no point in putting a deep red toned image next to one that is green. They just won’t work. There are complimentary colours and there are clashing colours and we need to be aware of these and shoot enough of the same or complimentary tones to make the album work.

Black and white images can work very well in an album but are usually best suited to reportage or candid shots. A page or two of smaller black and whites can work really well in storytelling the events of the day but should not really be mixed with colour images. So we need to make sure we shoot enough quality candid images both of our couple and their families to complete those pages.

So this is where the plan of the day meets the vision of the finished product. We shoot our bridal prep images to fit the pages as described above, we shoot our ceremony shots to fit the album the best way depending on what shape it is. Our couple are shot in locations we know will work with the design and our candid shots are produced with those black and white images in mind.

Add the plans of the timings, who we are shooting where and when and with what equipment and hopefully you can appreciate just some of the planning that goes into making that wedding album that you will love for years to come.