Part Three: Presentation and Presentation

The organising and taking of images on the day, selecting, editing, choosing etc – are all aspects of producing images and prints but the key question – what do we do with these images – must impact on your ‘brief’ to us and the ‘package’ you choose. Some clients choose a prints-only package and go their own way in organising their presentation and this fits fine with our ‘building-block’ philosophy. On the other hand, may couples want to see the end-product of an organised collection – and one that is designed to last a life-time. This desire is often extended to include the immediate families of the wedding couple. Illustration: A Jorgensen Panorama Album

From the perspective of organisation and display of images, the central feature of modern ‘story-book’ wedding photography is that the couple have many more images than previous generations because more is recorded. It is common for us to take 1000 images at a wedding; usual for us to retain 400-500 after selecting and editing for publication on our website and our Creative packages offer 200 prints as the baseline. The reasons for this – and advantages for the bride and groom (and their families and guests) have been discussed in Part One – but the serious questions of presentation and preservation have to be faced.

The answer is that a combination of display methods can be employed.

Presentation Boxes

Clients initially receive images in a presentation box or personalised ‘memory’ box and we know couples who have permanently kept some of their prints in their box. Nevertheless, this is usually a temporary - and always a partial - method of presentation.

 
Leather (Fair Trade) Albums

Inexpensive - but attractive - albums are hard to come by but we think we have the answer in our large 50 page (100 side) 15 by 10 inch Fair Trade, dark brown leather albums and their smaller stable-mate (50 page, 10 by 8 inch pages). We are offering these as part of our upgrades to Creative and Essence packages and as part of our Heirloom collection.

They enable a large number of prints to be displayed to illustrate the story of the day. The large album can take up to 200, 9 inch by 6 inch prints and 400 6 by 4 inch prints (although we actually advise around half this number) and is ideal to display prints of a variety of sizes ( 6 by 4, 7.5 by 5, 9 by 6, 10 by 8, 12 by 8) – see our Creative Album Package. The smaller album can take 2, 6 by 4 prints on a page (portrait) or one 9 by 6 print.

These albums are widely used both as the couples’ special album, as a supplementary album to the chief display album and as a parents’ album. We supply these for self-assembly or we can assemble for you. At £45 for the smaller album and £75 for the larger one, we feel these are exceptional value and are designed not to bow out when full.

Specialist Wedding Albums

We generally advise that 30 to 120 images can be displayed in one of the very attractive specialist albums that are manufactured by a small number of companies. The ‘Rolls-Royce’ of the wedding album world is generally conceded to be manufactured by Jorgensen of Australia. There is a massive range of album covers available (we have a boxed set of swatches) ranging from several shades of leather, to suede, to wood, to pewter and various types of cloth and in a number of different sizes. The UK company Spicer Hallfield also produce a varied and high-quality range. We list the albums in our Packages section of the website. These albums are not supplied direct to the public.

These are albums can double your photography budget - but there are genuine reasons for the costs involved. First, the photographs are placed in ‘mats’ or overlays – sheets of acid-free card with cut-outs (apertures) behind which the photographs are placed and secured. This means that your album always stays flat. These mats are stuck onto the card pages of the album (one each side) thereby providing a rigid three-layer composite page giving maximum protection to your images.

Illustration: A Spicer Hallfield Reportage Album

Second, the mats themselves are creatively designed to suit modern photographic techniques and styles where the flow of the day is reflected in informal images as well as more traditional poses. The mats enable terrific visual presentations to be achieved.

Thirdly, the albums are made using the finest materials available and will last a lifetime.

Fourth, a great deal of time goes into the production of a completed album – both in terms of consultation and in the care of physical construction. Also remember that the costs of the album include all your enlargements - at the extreme it could mean 24, 15 by 10 inch images (worth well over £400 if bought separately).

Each of the albums comes in a presentation box and with a wide range of aperture designs and with the ability for overlays/mats to be designed to your own specifications.

We feel that final decisions on albums can generally be left as a ‘second-phase’ after the wedding itself and after the images have been viewed but it is wise to have provisional budgets and plans. We have introduced our Heirloom Package in 2006 and we feel that this is ideal to cover all the bases and reflects incredible value.

DVDs and CDs

Images set to music and playable on TVs or computers are the twenty-first century photo ‘album’ and offer many advantages – the collection of images is easily transportable; the story of the day can be seen by many people at the same time thus creating an audience rather than isolated individual viewing; sequences (such as the wedding ceremony) can be shown effectively and - with each image shown for 4-6 seconds – a 15 minute ‘slideshow’ is ideally suited to general concentration levels! DVD slideshows are the ideal substitute for a video, especially as we are able to include video clips. We are finding a wide market for DVDs especially at a cost of £95, followed by £7.50 for subsequent copies.

For a small fee, we also provide a low resolution copy of all images on CD and offer the large digital ‘master’ images for sale so that clients can control their own enlargement printing, guest orders etc.