Wedding Albums For Everybody

At last count, the average wedding in the U.S. costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $27,000. Any couple paying that much has a right to expect that they'll be receiving one of the better wedding albums.

Some wedding photographers have begun to offer wedding albums that include what they call "boudoir sessions" for newly married couples. These are racy sessions that showcase the bride in sensual clothing, such as lingerie, or something more conservative if they like. A relatively obscure service a few years ago, but now a simple search of the Internet will turn up thousands.

Why has this trend taken off so rapidly? For one thing, it's certainly a different sort of wedding gift to give to the husband. But another reason is that, in preparation for their wedding, many women will diet and exercise to get into the best shape of their lives. And many women, after all that work, literally jump at the chance to get pictures of themselves in perhaps the best shape of their lives. And not too many men are complaining either.

The really nice thing about these sessions is that a woman doesn't have to have the "perfect" body. Successful boudoir photographers realizing that many women are well aware of their body's imperfections, are experts at putting their subjects at ease. In addition, most are also experts at minimizing a woman's bad attributes and accentuating her positive ones.

Wedding albums should be unique. Yes, to a certain extent, all wedding albums have pretty much the same components. They have pictures placed on a matte. Usually what makes the difference are the photographs themselves. And if you've ever wondered about the difference in hiring a top notch experienced wedding photographer as opposed to a simply good or fair photographer, simply compare their portfolios and you'll have little doubt about who you should hire.

While most newlyweds are used to the traditional wedding album look, you can add a bit of excitement to it by changing the format. Most of the time the pictures are simply placed behind a mat. Magazine style albums, however, allow the ability to enhance the look of the wedding pictures by adding clever graphic designs to each page. You can also add personality to a wedding album by adding captions beneath the photos. Magazine style wedding albums are considered one of the more stylish wedding albums formats. Many wedding albums today are created much like magazines. Photos are combined into montages, photos are captioned, and the entire wedding event is turned into a story.

Probably some of the best wedding photographers you'll find have some experience in making films. A film maker is used to telling a story. And in its simplest form, a movie is nothing more than thousands of images spliced together to tell an interesting story. And that's what you want a wedding album to do. Sure, you're working with a smaller number of images.

But ultimately you want the images to convey the feeling of the wedding so that even those that weren't there can feel involved in its story. There's no one better able to do this than a filmographer to whom this comes as second nature. Many photographers that have film making experience choose to storyboard their wedding albums.

Once the storyboard is complete, they have a good idea of how the final presentation should look and can continue its development. A storyboard is also useful for the couple to see as it gives them a good idea of the photographer's thought process before any film has actually been shot. And it gives them a chance to collaborate with the photographer and add creative input to the wedding album.

Many times the photographs of wedding albums will require a bit of touch-up. So your photographer will probably need to be proficient in a high-end graphics program like Photoshop in order to tweak the photographs exactly how they want them. This actually happens a lot in the industry.

If you think that this is unnecessary, remember that even the Royals do retouching. In the wedding album from the 1999 wedding between Prince Edward and Sophie Rhys-Jones, some of the photos of Prince William were digitally altered to give him a "happier" look. No matter the skill of the photographer, all of your photographs are unlikely to be perfect. But digital alterations, can make even imperfect photos seem perfect.