Okay, first off, if you haven’t checked out Kami & Jeremy’s wedding post yet, what are you waiting for?  Here’s the album we created for them – a sophisticated and daring combination of femme noir and suspicion.  (Our album company likes to be creative with swatch names.)  I didn’t have much time to photograph this book before we delivered it, so I apologize for the rather boring background.  This book deserves a backdrop as stylish as it is.  But I wasn’t going to hold up an album delivery for my own pathological need to photograph each album that passes through our studio.

I was so pleased that Kami decided to get a bit bold with her two-tone cover choice.  Just as your wedding is a unique event, your album deserves to be a one-of-a-kind as well.

One of the best things about a new album?  NEW ALBUM SMELL!  (So much better than new car smell.)  This leather is so rich and yummy.

Check out the beautiful workmanship where the two leathers are joined together.  Like buttah!

Tell me this isn’t going to be a showstopper when Kami wants to show off her wedding photos to her friends and family?

Want to see more albums?  Check out the album section on our blog.  Happy Friday!

I’ve got another great album to show off this Friday.  A set of albums actually!  Heather & Tom got married at River Birch Lodge and we created a beautiful 48-page 10×10 album for them, and an 8×8 parent copy, both in the beautiful Secret Garden leather that I blogged about earlier here.  These albums are absolutely gorgeous!  I can’t get enough of them.  They also decided to add a press printed album as a second parent album.  I couldn’t resist taking some photos before we carefully wrapped them up and shipped them off.  First off, here are the flush mount albums:

It was such a treat photographing these two albums.  The first thing you notice is the lovely textured cover and the size of these books.  These are big, thick, heavy, luxurious albums.  Heather and Tom were unwilling to sacrifice any part of the day when it came to their album design, and I applaud them for it.  These books really tell the entire story, and showcase many of the rustic and charming details that made their event so unique.  I think the leather they chose really suited them, and the theme of their event.  Here is a close-up of the back cover so you can see the whole effect.  

I love, love, love this leather!  Sometimes it’s so bittersweet sending these out the door to clients that live out of state, because I selfishly want to see their reactions when they see their albums.  

And here is the whole enchilada – the two flush mounts and the press printed book..  We offer both flush mount and pressbook parent albums. The flush mount albums are leather bound, with thick pages and true photographic prints. They are the ultimate heirloom piece to remember your day with. Press books are a more affordable option. They are available with faux leather or silk covers and the images are press printed on paper instead of using real photographs.  These books feature a layflat binding that gives a similar presentation to the flush mount books, which are designed to open flat so the entire spread can be seen.

Heather & Tom chose a faux leather called Foxdowns for this album.  I know the term “faux leather” brings about the image of those terrible cheap vinyl-looking fake bonded leathers.  I’m not a fan.  But these “vegan leathers”, as our album company calls them, are SO SUPER NICE.  Seriously. They are durable, and have a substantial feel similar to real leather.  The covers are lightly padded and really present beautifully.  I also love the two-tone effect of the texture in this cover material.  There are actually several different colors available in this “leather”.  Before their wedding, Heather & Tom ordered engagement albums for their parents in a slightly different shade of this material, so they will complement nicely with their wedding albums.

Like the flush mounts, there’s also an option to include an image cut out on the front of the book.

See how lovely this material is?

To finish up, here are a couple sample spreads from the book.  If you’d like to see more photos from their wedding, you can check out their blog post here.

Well that’s it for today.  I have a really stylish album to show off next week, so be sure to check back!  :)

Rounding out this month of album posts, I’ve got a big, bold album to show off.  This is a 10 x 15 vertical format flush mount with an acrylic cover called ICE.  The ICE covers feature a metallic print overlaid with a thick protective acrylic coating.  Metallic prints are very contrasty and have that lovely metallic shimmer.   With the acrylic on top, it makes for a terrific presentation.

The spine and back of this book are wrapped in a new leather called Krumble. It is has a lot of color and dimensionality in it – the slightly mottled way it is dyed gives the album a great character and an aged patina.  This leather is exclusive only to our book binder.  I continue to love these vertical format books.  This 10 x 15 is one size bigger in the same ratio as the 8 x 12′s I blogged about here and here.  We offer flush mounts in this vertical format in four different sizes, from an impressive 12 x 18 to a petite 6 x 9 – which would be a great size as a companion album with your e-session images or a small parent or grandparent album.

To finish up, here is a photo showing a stack of our samples.  From top to bottom there’s an 8 x 8, 10 x 10, 12 x 12, and the 10 x15.  Looking at this image, it’s dawned on me how we tend to order warm browns for sample albums.  I’m gonna have to mix things up with my next sample order!  What would you all like to see next? A bold color?  Something cool-toned in whites and silver?  I still have more albums to order!

I’m excited to share another album with you this Friday.  This is a sample we’ve had in our studio for awhile now – I photographed it in a rush months ago, never liked the photos, and didn’t get around to blogging it.  But I managed to get a few shots of it while I was photographing one of our other new samples, so voila! This bad boy is a 12×12 flush mount with an upgraded “Armour” cover.  According to our album maker, Armour is a metallic emulsion that has been adhered to a metal panel and then finished with a protective clear coat to guard against scratching.  It’s an extra thick cover, and very durable – arguably the most durable of the cover options that allow you to use a photo.  Because of the nature of printing on metal, these type of covers work best with either black & white images, or those with muted colors.  I thought it would look great with this shot of Aimee & Chris with the sun flare making things a bit hazy.  I think it’s a great fit!

The spine and back of the book are wrapped in this exceptional crocodile embossed leather called Sagebrush Lizard.  It would make for a substantial and impressive cover on its own.  I am really starting to wish our album company dabbled in making handbags on the side. Because this would make for a yummy purse.

So what do you think?  I’m totally in love with it!  This book is always hanging out at our studio, so if you are local and want to take a look in person, just let us know!

Hi everyone!  It’s Friday and I’m pleased to unveil another new studio sample – this gorgeous 10×10 inch flush mount featuring Kami & Jeremy’s wedding. This cover is a new leather for our album manufacturer, and it appears I’m not the only photographer freaking out over it.  I have to admit, from the swatch, this is a REALLY hard leather to visualize as a cover.  In fact I really wasn’t sold on it at first, but Andy loved it immediately.  It took seeing a few examples online from other photographers to realize this was something we needed to add to our collection.   Once I unwrapped the box I was blown away. This will be a great addition to the studio.

I have no idea how they create this leather, but if I had to guess, I think they use some kind of giant die to score the pattern into the leather and then peel off sections to reveal this pattern.  The dark sections are the top layer of leather….the lighter brown background is the suede-like  layer underneath.   This treatment gives every book a unique appearance.  It looks aged and well loved.  It’s an instant heirloom.

Here’s our 8×8 sample, the new one, and a 12×12 for comparison.  I’ll be talking more about the 12×12 next Friday, so you’ll have to wait until then to see more photos of it!

I am going to be blogging about albums every Friday this month!  We have lots of new goodies to share, and we always get good feedback on our album posts.  So if you love albums like I do, be sure to keep checking back.  And if you haven’t yet, subscribe to our RSS feed (that little icon by our search bar up top) so you don’t miss a thing!

It’s been a little over a year since I’ve shared some guestbooks on the blog, so I thought it was high time I show some off again!  Guestbooks have been one of our most popular products since we started offering them in 2009.  Each 20 page press printed book is custom designed with images from the engagement session, and has plenty of room included in the design for guests to write a personalized message.

I decided to have two actual books clients ordered last year re-printed as studio samples.  The first book with the blue cover is the one I blogged about previously here.

Here’s Jee-Young and David’s book.  I loved the bright and cheerful colors on the cover.  All three of these books have a coated canvas cover which allows us to wrap a photo/design around the entire book.

And here’s my two favorite dentists, Elizabeth & Sam.  The colors on this cover are also glorious!

There hinged or layflat style books allow you to see the entire image – you don’t lose any space to the binding.  This design also makes it much easier for guests to sign because they don’t have to hold the pages down or worry about running out of room near the center of the spread.

Guestbooks are an a la carte item that can be added to any wedding package.  We suggest upgrading to a “premium” engagement session which is a longer session with more locations so the books has more variety.  If you’d like to find out more about these books or want to take a peek at them in person at our studio, just give us a shout!

Hey everyone!  Somehow I let a month slip by without a post!  Eeek!  December was such a busy month for us as we worked hard to get all our late fall weddings edited and off to our clients.  Plus with the holidays and everything else….well you know how it is.  We were literally working up until the last moment of 2010 – we ended up second shooting a wedding with a good friend and local photographer on New Year’s Eve.  So we had a pretty busy New Years!  I hope everyone else had a great time over the holidays.

Things will be slightly less crazy from now until spring when wedding season ramps up all over again.  In the “downtime” we’ll be turning our attention into creating albums for our clients.  Ok, I have to admit, I am a bit infatuated with our album company.  I’m the biggest fangirl ever when it comes to the company we use.  The leathers and options they offer are intoxicating.  I’ve been known to spend hours at a time just playing with our leather swatches trying out different combinations.  If I could justify the expense, I’d be ordering a new sample album every week, because I want one in every color imaginable so I can show our clients how awesome they are.  So trust me, when an album arrives at our studio, I am as excited as you are to receive it.  It never gets old.

That said, here is a look at Cara & Nick’s lovely album.  They choose an 8×12 book, which is quickly becoming a very popular option amongst our clients.  The vertical format feels a little more modern, and 8×12 is a great size.  It feels substantial without being overly bulky in your lap.  The leather they chose is a newer option and one of my top favorites, it’s a textured black leather called “Ludicrous”.  It is super yummy and luxurious.

Can you almost smell the leathery goodness?

Here’s a sample spread:

Did they make a good choice or what?  I love it!

Check out this beautiful, black-and-gold damask leather album we sent off to a client a few days ago.  I am in love with it.  The cover is nicely padded, and feels luxurious and weighty in your hands.  This particular leather, called Statuesque, is sophisticated and stylish, and I love the vertical format.  This book is 8×12, though I have to say, it really feels larger than that.

Here are a couple of the sample spreads:

Our new samples albums have finally started trickling in, and I’m so excited to share them!  First up is a two-tone leather 8×8 flush mount album featuring Meredith & Mike’s beautiful wedding at St. Ambrose & the Grosse Pointe Yacht Club.  I have been smitten with that silvery embossed leather since we got our album company’s swatches, so it was kind of a no brainer to choose this cover.  We paired it with a super soft blue suede and it looks even better in person. I LOVE petting this album.  I seriously took it out of the box every night for the first week we had it just so I could admire it.  It pained me to finally drop it off at the studio.

While I have posted before about some of our other albums, this actually the first flush mount I’ve put on the blog.  For those of you who don’t know the lingo, there are three major types of wedding albums:

• Traditional Matted Album: Photographic prints of various sizes are put in mats and then assembled into a book.  This is the book most of our mothers have from their weddings. They are beautiful and classic, and still available, though flush mount albums are the trend right now.
• Press Printed “Coffee Table” Style Book: This book is printed on a printing press, and the quality, while still quite good, is not quite as impressive as a true photographic print.  These books have thin pages, typical of a book you’d get at a bookstore.  Our “coffee table” books have a hinged binding which allows the page to lay flat.  I think this is so much better than the traditional binding because you can see all of the page.  We love these books for sign-in books or parent albums.
• Flush Mount: This style book is also known as a “digital album”, but that term annoys me, because a book is NOT digital!  A flush mount is made up of true photographic prints, but usually the pages are designed, so there may be multiple photos, white space, collages, etc.  The entire print is then bound to mat board, then the whole thing is trimmed and hand-assembled into a book.  Each page seamlessly runs to the edge, and the gutter (the center of the book) is very minimal or practically non-existant, when the print is folded.

Okay, I lied, there is one more type of book.

• Mounted Album: This style book is very similar to the flush mount, but instead of the print being mounted to the page prior to assembly, the book is put together and the prints are added afterwards.  Instead of the prints going flush to the edge of the page, there’s a small area around each print where the underlying mat board is visible.  This is still a fine quality book, but a little more economical than a flush mount.

Okay, so blah, blah, blah, where was I?  Oh yeah, so this book = 64 square inches of awesome.  Or actually, since it opens to a 16×8 image, maybe it’s actually 128 square inches of awesome.  This book feels heavy and lovely in your hands.  It’s substantial.  It’s got a bit of attitude.  The pages are thick and sturdy, and it opens flat so you can see every bit of every image.

This picture shows what I mean about the images going flush to the edge of the pages.  Also, the image on the bottom right does a great job of showing how smooth the two fabrics flow together.  In all honesty, I was a little worried about this combination, because this particular leather is really thick and the suede is a lot thinner.  But the join is smooth and beautiful.  I was really impressed.

Here’s one more to show you what I mean:

See how the pages open up flat?  That is a good thing!  :)

Finally, here is a comparison of a round spine versus a flat spine.  Our album company offers both styles, though for some speciality cover options, they can only do the flat spine.  I think the round spine looks great with the leather covers though, it makes the book look even more substantial and unique.  The cover is lightly padded as well, which gives it a luxurious feel.

We really took our time and did our homework before we settled on an album company to work with.  And I have to say, we are really happy with the choice we made.  All of our albums are made-to-order here in the USA, and are assembled by hand.  Each one is a unique creation – there’s no warehouse with a bunch of pre-assembled books lying around.  There is a staggering number of cover materials and color options so you can choose something that’s truly unique and fits your style.  They also offer metal and acrylic covers, as well as canvas, and glass, and well, the list goes on!  (We have a 12×12 with a metal cover due to arrive this week, and I’m sure it will be up on the blog soon.)

The one other thing that makes each album unique is that every album is custom designed.  We design every album from scratch, without using templates.  It’s just one more way we make your album uniquely yours.  Below is a sampling of some of the spreads in this 8 x 8 book.

In case you can’t tell, I’m SUPER HAPPY about this book.  I have always been a bookworm, and bookbinding fascinates me.  Seeing our work so beautifully bound and in such an attractive package just makes me ridiculously happy.  It’s very gratifying to us personally, so I can only imagine how exciting it is for our clients.  We will be sharing both more sample albums and actual client albums this year on the blog, and I can’t wait.  :)

]]> http://blog.westparkphoto.com/2010/01/22/64-square-inches-awesome/feed/ 3 http://blog.westparkphoto.com/2009/12/12/product-spotlight-amandas-guestbook/ http://blog.westparkphoto.com/2009/12/12/product-spotlight-amandas-guestbook/#comments Sun, 13 Dec 2009 01:33:05 +0000 Lynn http://blog.westparkphoto.com/?p=512 Our wedding season is starting to wind down.  We have one more wedding left for 2009 and then we are done until April 2010.  But that doesn’t mean we are taking a sabbatical!  This is the time of the year that we work with our clients on their album designs, and plan and order our new studio samples for next year.  So in the next few weeks, I’ll be updating the blog periodically with some of the products our clients have ordered, as well as some samples we have at the studio.  If you are a current or prospective client and you’d like to stop in and see our new stuff, the best time would be after the holidays – we have several things on order right now that haven’t come in yet! We have some beautiful flush mount wedding albums that will be on the blog soon, but in the meantime, here’s a peak at another fun product.  :)

This has been one our favorite (and most popular) products this year – our custom sign-in books.  I’ve mentioned these before a few times on the blog.  Kelly’s guestbook can be found here and here.  We liked this one from Amanda & Dave’s Chicago engagement session so much that we decided to order a sample for our studio.   We offer a few different styles in guestbooks – this particular book is a beautifully press printed coffee table style book.  It’s a hardcover book with a laminated canvas cover.   This book is 8.5 x 11 but we also offer these in 8 x 8 and 11 x 14.

I am really partial to the 8.5 x 11 size because it opens to an 8.5 x 22 spread, which leaves plenty of room for big images with enough white space left over for your guest’s signatures.   It’s a very distinct size ratio and just looks modern to me.

See how this book goes on for miles?  That’s what I mean.  The pages are matte to make signing easy.  (This book is also available in glossy pages too which would be great for engagement session album or boudoir book, etc.)  The pages have a nice weight and feel.  And the best part is that the book is bound with hinged pages, meaning it opens flat, like a flush mount style album.  It allows you to see the whole page, and design a spread that crosses the gutter of the page.  See the photo below to see what I mean about the hinge.

As you can see the gutter (i.e., the middle of the book where the page is split) is pretty small – and you can see here how the book opens completely flat so you can really view each image as it was meant to be – without it disappearing into the binding.  I love this feature.  :)

These books always end up being a huge hit at weddings.  The guests tend to interact with them more than a regular sign-in book.  It gets passed around and admired.  People tend to draw little arrows and point out their favorite photos.  :)  It’s a great way to use your engagement images and share them with your friends and family.

If you are one of our clients and are interested in this product, you can use part of your album credit towards it, or purchase it as a stand-alone product.  We need a minimum of 3 weeks lead time to put one of these babies together, but if you have a wedding during prime season (June-Sept) the more notice you can give us, the better!  We also have some sign-in book options using silk and leather bound books and photographic prints – talk to us and we can explain all the options!  You can even coordinate your guestbook to match your wedding album.