Here’s Sarika and Sri’s album design from event at home and The Omni William Penn Hotel. The Omni has become the most popular venue for Hindu weddings for good reason. They have such an attentive and professional staff with Lora, Darlene and Cory and you couldn’t ask for a more beautiful location – more to come from our latest events soon.

Slideshow Follows

If I could point to one trend or comment we’ve been hearing over and over this past year or so, it would be an interest or a move back to a classic style.

From the choice of a color scheme, to the design and style of wedding gowns and tuxedos, through the design and style of a couple’s wedding album, we hear “I’m looking for something timeless, not trendy”.

Photographers who have been in the business a while, remember the double exposure, bride and groom superimposed in a champagne glass or on the wall of the church. Nothing says 1980’s more than this image. It looked pretty cool at the time and it was a technical challenge with a film camera, but it’s so dated today.

The style of wedding photography has changed dramatically for the better, from what was little more than a series of portraits, to a style which really communicates the emotion and story of a couple’s wedding day.

But there are some photography trends which might not pass the test of time like selective color and the most current, the use of texture screens.

While I have not doubt that coffee table albums will continue to have a currency and contemporary feel, over-designed albums with lots of graphic design elements are already looking a bit dated.

Coffee table albums continue to be the majority of our designs, but we have had quite a few more requests recently for matted albums and especially our newest album, the Duo.

The Duo is a combination of a matted and coffee table album with lots of flexibility in design. It’s an amazingly beautiful album from the planet’s premier album company, Queensberry of New Zealand.

Here’s a sample of our latest design from Ellen and John’s wedding at St Stanislaus and The Pennsylvanian.

I really love working on albums, when the story of a couple’s wedding day all comes together. Barb and I had so much fun at their wedding. It’s been great to relive all of the sights and sounds of their special day.

This album is going to a Queensberry Album Company creation in one of their new and more rectangular sizes – it almost has a panorama feel and I can’t wait to see it in print.

Slideshow Follows

As shown, an ostrich leather cover with 11g of white gold on a gold plate, finished with a 3.75 carat diamond initial. Cover cost  as shown (album design and pages not included) is $16,000.

Please let me know if you have trouble viewing their gallery – it’s a new feature and should be more accessible than a Flash slide show for those of you who do their research at work (psst….I won’t tell).

We spend countless hours with our brides and grooms from our first consultation through the delivery of their album and we really get to know them well by the end of the process. For our clients who live out of town, we really feel a sense of loss when we deliver their album.

While the national average for album delivery is 9 months, we’ve been delivering albums 3 months after wedding, assuming we receive a couple’s album selections in a timely manner.

We hope that our clients use us for maternity and baby photographs along with photographs of family gatherings after their wedding. Complimentary portrait sessions are included with all of our wedding collections. It’s brought us very close to a number of our former clients who we now count as some of our best friends.

Nicole and Chris, like me, are big hockey fans and we started their engagement session at the Mellon Arena. It’s been a journey from the initial stages of their wedding planning through their wedding and it’s been an honor to have been a part of the start of their new life together.

Nicole and Chis were married at St. Vincents with a reception following at the Youghiogheny Country Club where Chris is a member. We had so much fun together and the party was a blast. Nicole looked absolutely beautiful and Chris looked quite dashing – just the love he has for her in his eyes – yeah, I cried – such a softy.

The DJ was Mark Zini, Cake by Tamie, Flowers by Stacy and the event was catered by the club.

Here’s a recent wedding album from a beautiful wedding on a warm sunny day this past summer, just to brighten the spirits.

We had 8 albums delivered yesterday, so more to come…..

It’s hard for a client to imagine how everything will come together in their final album design when choosing photographs from their unfinished proofs.

The digital darkroom opens limitless creative possibilities that were much more difficult in the chemical darkroom (although I do miss shutting myself up in the dark and disappearing with some great music for hours at a time). The original photograph is just a starting point.

We custom design every book to suit the tastes of each of our clients – some with a cleaner simple design and some with a few more graphic design elements to add some visual interest.

Here’s a sample of a recent design for Lisa and Jim who were married in Hershey with a reception at the awesome Hershey Hotel.

Click Here

It was a great convention. I always look forward to taking master level seminars with the world’s top wedding photographers and nosing around the amazing trade show.

Fine-Art album design and the time it takes to complete an album project was a topic of discussion at many of the talks.

While chatting with Denis Reggie, whose fee is $40,000 for wedding photography services, Denis was asked if he has couples who invest that much in their photography but never complete their image selection process. He said that it happens all the time.

While that’s amazing, I think it’s understandable. Wedding photography has changed so much in recent years. Wedding photography used to be little more than a series of posed portraits, where today, contemporary wedding photography tells the story of your wedding day from start to finish.

So, while it was common in the old days to take 250 images at a wedding, and maybe proof 175, I frequently capture that many images during bridal preparations. It’s a bit of daunting task to look through 600 or more images to pick your favorites.

We have to do better and believe we have the answer.

Album Pre-Design – We have started to pre-design wedding albums and it’s working terrifically. It’s much easier to start with a finished concept than it is to imagine a completed wedding album, especially if you haven’t designed an album before. We have some new tools that will help us to showcase your rough-draft design much more quickly.

Our goal is for you to see an initial design at an Internet cafe, while you are still on your honeymoon, or immediately upon your return.

I know you are going to love album pre-design – we’re very excited.