I also get a great deal of satisfaction from hand deliveries too as I see the unbridled delight on peoples faces when they see their prints or products. This is particular true with delivering a wedding album. I think I’ve talked about this before but I’m going to do so again as it really is an experience that gives me immense job satisfaction.
I delivered Anja and Daniel’s album just before lunchtime. I always try and sit with the couple when they open up and take it out of its box and then start poring over the pages. Although they have seen proofs of the pages, so they know what it will look like, they are never prepared for just how amazing it looks in the flesh! There really is no finer way to showcase your wedding photographs than in a top of the range album!
Anja and Daniel had ordered a large 12” x 12” Image Book with a magazine style layout. Because this is a pretty big album with outsize pages the picture quality is absolutely stunning! The full page spreads, which are full bleed, simply jump out at you! We’d also incorporated a few personal touches to the album design too. Anja and Daniel’s colours for their wedding had been predominantly green and yellow, as you’ll see from the pictures throughout this blog. The bridesmaids wore green dresses and carried sunflowers, the cake was decorated green and white with iced sunflowers and the beautiful white chair covers were adorned with green sashes. To complement this I’d designed a few pages with white backgrounds and coloured matched the photograph borders to the bridesmaids dresses. Similarly, I coloured matched page backgrounds to the sunflowers and again gave the photographs borders that mirrored the bridesmaids colours.
Daniel and Anja had also included two of the photographs I’d taken in the huge ornate window of the Ante-Room. One is shown here, the other can be found in an earlier post when I blogged their wedding. We came up with the idea of positioning the two images side by side on a dark background and giving them gold borders that coloured matched the Melville Castle curtains that framed the couple as they sat in the window. The page was Daniel’s favourite! Along with 39 others, lol!
I’m often asked why I don’t post pictures of my album pages. In fact its also been suggested to me many times that I should do a short video leafing through a wedding album to allow couples visiting my blog or website to see how amazing they are. However, I think I’ve mentioned this before, but wedding photographers who can do their own design work guard their designs and idea’s rigorously. It’s what makes our albums stand out from all the other photographers who use the drag and drop templates. So it’s something that I refrain from doing. To be honest, its risky enough posting photographs as I’ve had a couple of experiences of other photographers stealing my images and using them for their own marketing and advertising. This is a problem that several of the countries top photographers have had as with modern day internet access it is all too easy. It’s one of the reasons why my images online are never larger than 400 pixels, so even if they get stolen for internet usage they are too small to be used in someone else’s album or brochure.
The last occasion I caught another photographer using my images was just last year. One of my brides had stumbled across his website and noticed some of his pictures she knew were from weddings I’d photographed. I had a look and sure enough he’d lifted the images from my website and was using them on his own. When I contacted him about this he said he would be happy to pay me for their usage explaining that he was a new wedding photographer and although he had several bookings lined up he hadn’t as yet photographed a wedding and so needed some “real” wedding images for his website. He said he loved my style of photography and would seek to emulate it and as he was based down near London he wasn’t going to be in direct competition with me so it would be okay to use my photographs. It’s almost unbelievable isn’t it? Anyway I could tell you a few stories worse than that that other photographers have experienced so I guess I shouldn’t complain too much, lol!
Anyway, Daniel and Anja were over the moon with their album! They must have spent twenty minutes on every page and then went back through it again! They were going to a big family Christmas party that evening so the album was going to be taken along and given centre stage! Its hard to describe how satisfying it is when I see the natural, spontaneous, joy on a couple’s faces as they go through their wedding album. As a wedding photographer in Edinburgh wherever possible I will always hand deliver albums for this reason. It’s the greatest feedback I get!
If you are currently planning your wedding I am always happy to come out and meet up with you and look through some wedding albums and books. Just drop me an email or give me a call. Alternatively, if you’ve not yet firmed up a date or venue, keep a regular check on the Latest News and Events page of my website as I’m regularly exhibiting and appearing at various venues and events.
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