One of the very first things I do when starting to design an album is choose the image or images for the first page and the last page. When you know the exact beginning and end of a story, the middle comes a whole lot easier.
One of my favorite habits from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is “Begin with the end in mind.” I always start with the last image. Usually this is an iconic image of the couple together. They are usually having a moment together – more often than not they are not looking at the camera. Here are two examples of what our studio often does.
© Fundy
© Focht – creator of the Focht Retouch Palette and photo marketing templates.
The key to choosing the final image is that it must give a feeling of closure on the day, but still capture the couple’s love. Often this final image is taken at the end of the day. For some reason we usually end up using a BW image at the end of our albums. I don’t think there are any benefits to BW over color. Here in the NW, it is usually dark at the end of the day whether we are inside or outside and the photography lends itself to BW.
For the first page of the album focus on either the location and details or the couple themselves. We prefer to focus on the location and will sometimes use details to augment the photo.
© Fundy and Focht
But, sometimes this isn’t a possibility. In the next album beginning the bride’s family were immigrants from Vietnam. It’s traditional to have the ceremony in the bride’s house, which as a location didn’t lend itself to an album spread. For this album we chose to use a fashion portrait.
© Focht
In this final album, we opted for out second choice as a beginning, detail shots.
© Focht
To sum up, for first pages, we prefer to use location and location detail shots. If the location does not lend itself to this, we then prefer to use detail shots on the first page. If that is not possible, our final choice is a portrait of the couple.
Hope this helps in your album designs.
Fundy
Fundy is the creator of the Fundy Album Builder, Album Approved and Mobile Fotographer.
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1 Comment at "The End of and Beginning of Album Design"
Great topic…this is where I put my initial energy when beginning an album design as well.
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