Photo Books for Weddings and Other Occasions

A trend I'm seeing lately are clients wanting us to publish Photo Books instead of traditional matted Wedding Albums.  

Everyone is offering Photo Books these days - but make no mistake - you get what you pay for.  Still, they can offer a substantial savings cost compared to the Wedding Album - especially considering that some of these albums can carry a wholesale cost of $500 and beyond just for the materials - and that doesn't even begin to cover the cost of any editing, creation, design, graphics, or photos.  On a $1,000-$1,200 budget for entry level wedding photography, that's not going to cut it - the "fancy album" would eat 70% of the budget - and nobody wants to do the kind of work a wedding photography gig takes, for free.

Chances are if you've seen a teaser ad for a cheap photo book, it's from a company that does a whole lot of consumer level mass production.  In the end - the finished product will be the equivalent of going to Sam's Club or Costco to get prints done.  The prints might be in the general shape of the picture you took - but pale in comparison to the top notch quality a professional lab produces!  The lab print not only will be more clear and color accurate, but will last years longer too.  Books are no different.  Quality is everything - and for a truly custom photo book, be prepared to pay for not only a superior hardcover work - but also for specially designed graphics and the skills of an experienced layout designer as well.

Enough of that - let's take a look at one example I've posted on my website -


The lab I used to produce this piece did a lovely job.  I probably spent a sum total of two whole days putting it together trying to get everything just right.  Whoa - that doesn't sound right?  Well, if you don't count design time for backgrounds, maybe about 6 hours total over two days.   Here's what this involved.

Books come in unnatural sizes - many are square - this one is 11x8.5 - and while that's great for your printer - it's not so good for the images a 2:3 crop or full frame DSLR sensor produces.  In some cases the images we wanted to use had to be cropped - or in the case of this cover photo - needed to be extended to fit....not just resized but reconstructed to add content where it was needed using advanced post processing techniques.   Of course I didn't have to do this - I only did it because that's the exact image we wanted - and I'm a perfectionist.

I also designed custom graphics backgrounds to use throughout the book - lots of them so it wasn't repetitive or cheesy looking.  Using cookie cutter backgrounds, stock layouts or plain color, is not only lazy, but just anther way to make a photo book look terrible.  I wanted to do it right - and completely custom from the ground up so it would be truly something unique and treasured.  

In the case of this photo book I didn't want to use any text at all other than our studio logo.  This is really up to the tastes of the client, but I find that catchy sayings and text in general, may actually take something away from the image viewing experience.

Doing the layout is also something else that requires some real vision along with skills and talent - in the design state it's really difficult to picture how the end product will look.  I have an extensive background working in graphics, publishing and advertising so was able to freely draw on those skills in "seeing" conceptual things like facing pages and syncing the background graphics with the images on the page as well.  It's not anywhere near just dragging and dropping a bunch of pictures into a template - at least if you want a custom, professional looking product in the end.

For a full gallery of images of the book and how it was put together - visit the link below!
http://www.karenengel.com/books

Now for the bottom line - cost.  The wholesale price of just printing this single book was $70+ shipping!  That doesn't include developing and creating my original artwork/graphics, design time, materials/tools or labor.  If I were to charge someone $150 for it - they might think it was outrageous... but in this scenario, I would only be making roughly $13/hour with absolutely no compensation for overhead.  That's not much better pay than working at McDonalds.  

Moral of the story - there's much more than meets the eye to a photographer's job - so never underestimate the work and time dedicated towards delivering a professional product.

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