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SAFFRON - SESHU'S DOCUMENTARY WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHY & PORTRAITS BLOG
Wedding Albums Are A Work Of Art |
02.01.09 |
A Client Testimonial And Short Description Of My Workflow |
I photographed Priti and Tahir's wedding in early January 2008. They live in New York, but Priti's folks live in the Bay Area. When I custom-designed their album, I had it shipped to Priti's parent's home as they were eager to look at it first. It wasn't until recently that Priti herself got to peruse through her own album. Here are her words of appreciation:
"sesh - t & i just saw the wedding book and are a little speechless (which you know is unusual for us!). it surpassed any hope we could've had. how on earth did you create this!?! northern cali is still abuzz talking about your skills, from the family circuit to our friends, people who haven't even seen the book yet keep telling us how amazing they think you are and how much they appreciated your thoughtful work during the wedding. anyway...just a corny note to tell you THANK YOU for capturing each moment in a way that we can appreciate as photography-lovers...we can't thank you enough! love & hugs, priti" What a heartfelt response to my work. I was nearly in tears when I read these words. Yes, album designing does take time. It can't be a hodge-podge of images slapped together in the interests of saving time and moving on to the next client. I have never worked that way because I do believe each wedding album is a work of art in itself. Rush through it and the final product will be mediocre. So, after the wedding images are posted to a private gallery, I usually let the images simmer. I come back to them in about a week's time and start sorting them by their ability to tell a story, by their inherent quality and uniqueness. When I have assembled some 100 or 120 images, I begin the slow and meticulous task of pacing the album, just as a director would a movie. Weddings have ebbs and flows in what happens during the day. Packing all the interactive images at the beginning would leave no other crescendos throughout the rest of your book. So, by this time, I have switched hats - from being a photographer, to being a photo editor. Introducing details like flower arrangements, rings or wedding vows that brides and grooms write for themselves are all interesting and required for a wedding album to be successful. When the final images have been chosen, they are further enhanced using Photoshop. Then the process of laying the images on the page commences. So, now I am a designer. This is usually the longest part of the process as I am still working with some flexible ideas of how the images should flow throughout the album. The ultimate goal is to comprehensively narrate the events of the wedding, whether it is over three-days like some of my clients or just one, and to display my client's images in such a way that best represents their experience of their special day. To that end, my designs are almost always simple, elegant and what I would like to think of as being timeless. Most often wedding albums can quickly appear dated because the latest trends in design overtake the mission of the album and deny clients an album experience. I want my clients to open up their albums 20 years from now and feel not just nostalgic, but transported right back to those moments that they experienced. So I eschew extraneous elements like drop shadows, keylines and the use of spot color in images, which draw the eyes away from the images themselves. Once the images are in place, I produce a PDF for my clients to look over and approve. Then the digital files are all sent to my album maker for printing and binding. Here is the initial design of Priti and Tahir's wedding album. And here is the final version. To recap, here are the posts I published on my blog after Priti and Tahir's wedding in California: The Nikah | Virudham | Mehendi & Sangeeth | Vivaham | Reception | Portraits If you have any questions or comments about my process or workflow, please feel free to post your thoughts below. I will be happy to respond to you. |
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| category: Weddings tags: Weddings, Albums, Art, Custom Design, Testimonial, Workflow |
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