Album Selections
Choosing which photos to have in your album can seem harder than it should be when you have hundreds of photos to go through. With the modern layouts of the Wedding Book and Story Book it is also essential to allow for some ‘artistic license’ to create an album with a story that flows, and a design that works.
I suggest an average of 2.5 images per page, so for a standard 40 page album that is approximately 100 photos. I wouldn’t recommend choosing more than 80 so there is some flexibility in designing the album. Some people can be very particular and want to pick every photo in the album, others prefer to put their trust in me to use my best judgement, and will pick much less. The main things I find it hard to decide on are photos of your guests- I don’t know who is important and who isn’t! Unless you have a really strong preference, choose you photos in colour and I will make the decision on which I think should be black and white.
This is my recommended process for making your album selections. This ensures your favourites are featured as they deserve, and allows for you to control as much or as little of the photo selection process as you like. It seems complicated, but trust me- I edit thousands of photos a week so know all about whittling down selections!
Choosing Photos for your Album
5 Stars
First go through and pick your 5 star images. These are the ones you absolutely love and that you definitely want featured in your album as main focal images. At this stage don’t feel forced into making sure you have one from the speeches, one showing the flowers, one showing the kiss etc, this is just about your favourites, not making sure you have everything. Don’t 5 star too many and don’t take too long about it- these should be the ones which instantly stand out for you. Try for about a dozen, definitely no more than 20.
4 Stars
Next go through again and choose your 4 stars. These are the ones you definitely want in your album but didn’t quite make it to the best-of-the-best 5 star ranking. I suggest picking a few from each part of the day, such as your favourite ‘getting ready’ photo, your favourite from the ceremony and so on. Again, don’t feel like you have to make sure you have one of this, one of that, just pick the ones you love.
Hopefully your selection will be less than half of your total album images and should be ‘all killers and no fillers’. If you are feeling very laid back you can stop there and I’ll fill in the gaps. Still itching to choose more? Move on…
3 Stars
At the 3 star stage its time to think about what’s missing. Look at your 4 and 5 star images from each key part of the day and think about what else you would like to make sure is in there. Control freaks go crazy at this stage. If you are bored already, this is the time to start trusting me to make some decisions for you.
Forget 2 and 1 star, unless there are any that you absolutely hate, but I wouldnt neccessarily know it. Eg. A really great photo of your worst enemy.
When you think you are there with your selections we’ll meet up and go through them. Then I’ll go away and design the layouts, which takes about 2-3 weeks. Your 5 stars will be featured heavily, as full page spreads if possible. Your 4 stars will definitely be included and then I build in the 3 stars and add more as needed for the design and to make the story flow. If I do need to drop anything it will be from the 3 star selections but only if I really can’t seem to make it fit, or perhaps if there is another very similar.
You’ll see the proofs of the layouts and can let me know if you want to make any changes, swaps etc. Then the album goes to the printer; Storybooks take about 2 weeks and Wedding books 4 weeks in production.
