So for months now I have been trying to decide on an Album Company. I found Album Company No. 1 on a professional photographer forum. It had received praise for its quality and affordability. I inquired with the company and found the prices were not so affordable at all! Also the products, while nice and professional looking, just didn’t make me go “ouuuuu!” For a while, I assumed I’d go with Company No. 1, and even included one of their albums in my Platinum package … luckily no one ordered it by the time I did the math and figured out that minus the cost of the album itself there was only a $50 difference between my Gold and Platinum package. Put simply, I was offering several extra hours of coverage and about 30 extra retouched prints essentially for free just because I just HAAAAD to offer and album and REFUSED to charge more than X-Number of dollars for any package at the time.
I mentioned my situation to another good professional photographer friend of mine and he jumped with excitement thinking he had just the right thing for me! He introduced me to Album Company No. 2, which offered extremely affordable prices for what I was assured were pro-quality prints!!! With this, I could keep the price of my Platinum package exactly where it was! I spent several months dealing with Album Company No. 2. I got their prices, created an entire price listing of my own based off what they were charging, and wrote descriptions for what albums I’d be offering for my site. I was aware that the album wouldn’t look very fancy on the outside, but my main concern was the quality of the prints, my ability to custom design, and being able to offer something my clients could actually afford. Very excited, I learned the company’s design software and drew up my first sample album, which I paid for out of my own pocket to have something to show to prospective clients. They NEEDED to know exactly what they were getting in advance of making any purchases. The album arrived in amazingly fast time! I opened the box and thought the cover was nice, or as nice as I expected it to be: a simple hardback photo cover.
When I opened the album, the first thing I noticed was that some of the pages that were supposed to be full bleeds, instead, had a white line at the top and right side of the image. To me, this looked terrible! I had followed the company’s layout instructions exactly to avoid having the edges of some images cut off, and the result was even worse than if I had just not read the instructions at all. I also noticed that while the color was a perfect match (what my photographer friend had been raving about) each printed page was comprised of what looked like miniscule gray octagons. Because the octagons were not just on the photos, but the stock backgrounds I included, I knew the effect was a result of whatever printing process the company must have used. At that moment I knew there was NO WAY I could use this album company. With such a simple product, and prints that did not meet my, albeit, very high standards, Company 2 no longer had a leg to stand on. Not to mention they blew off every call I made regarding this matter, asking them to at least fix the bleeds in the album so I could give it to the couple whose photos I used to make it.
Close to six months of searching later, it was back to square one. I talked to one of my other favorite wedding photographers, Jared Wilson, and he recommended Company No. 3. Jared is one of THE BEST wedding photographers to date and a constant inspiration to me. He said he uses Company No. 3 for his engagement albums, because they are slightly more affordable than the fancy super-expensive one he uses for his wedding albums. I looked at Company No. 3’s albums online and was absolutely in love! But could I really afford them? I talked to a representative on the phone the other day and got a price list. I could have jumped out of my pants I was so excited! They were at the tippy top of my price list, and more in line with Album Company No. 1, but I had since raised my prices since the time I was shopping for Company No. 1, and the difference in albums was so worth it! Just look at how beautiful these traditional library-style book covers are:
Or these leather Coffee Table books which offer unending design capability.
I can’t wait to design my first sample album and receive it in the mail! I’m not worried about the quality of prints so much in this case, because if it’s good enough for Jared, it’s good enough for me! This is me giddy and relieved at finally finding the perfect albums not just for me, but for my lovely brides-to-be.