Wedding Albums // Professional Lab vs Consumer Lab
One thing I do highly encourage ordering is a wedding album. Some clients do not have the funds upfront when they sign the contract, which is fine. Clients are more than welcome to order albums and prints after their wedding.
Personally when I got married years and years ago, I hired a friend who was just starting to photograph weddings on her own and she ordered me the sweetest gift along with my pictures, a small wedding album from Shutterfly. I still treasure that small album to this day, but it has shown some wear and tear over the last 5.5 years. Although it stays in a display case in my livingroom, when I went to photograph it I noticed it is starting to bend and warp.
So, I decided to create a blog post to compare the professional albums you can order from your photographer vs creating an album on your own via shutterfly, wal-mart, etc.
First, my personal shutterfly album.
As you can see here, the pages are naturally bending and warping
The spine itself looks okay, but…
From this angle you can see, it no longer fully closes.
Also, why is there a barcode? I have no idea.
Now here is a sample album from one of my 2014 weddings. This album was printed through my professional printer. It is a 8×8 leather bound album with 15 spreads and thick pages.
The front cover features a beautiful script debossed into the leather.
It lays flat, so you can use an entire spread without an unsightly interuption.
The pages are strong and so far I have not had any issues with bending or warping.
There is no doubt in my mind, these professional leather bound albums will last a lifetime. As I design them, I love thinking about who will be browsing through them 50-100 years from now.
