Photobooks have become extremely popular in the past few years. They are easy to make, very accessible, pretty inexpensive, and make great gifts for grandparents and other family members for Christmas or birthdays. They’re also really nice for documenting a vacation or any other life event. What exactly defines a photobook, though? Think Snapfish, Winkflash, Blurb, even CVS is selling them nowadays. The cover can be either hard or soft, photo finish or some other material, and the pages are akin to a heavy duty magazine. The photos are printed right to the page. The print quality will vary depending on who you purchase from, but some of the better places can produce a pretty good looking book. The binding works but is not intended to last for years under heavy use. Below is a photo of some photobooks we printed off for use at bridal shows and client meetings.

A wedding album is a completely different animal. Thick, heavy pages hold actual photos printed on professional acid-free paper that won’t fade or discolor for 100+ years. The binding is incredibly durable and tight; it won’t get crease lines in it after being opened three times. The cover is hard and can come in different materials ranging from silk to buckram to leather. Oftentimes they come with a fitted box to store it in. They generally come in a range of sizes and can be impressively large if that’s your type of thing. There are other options like matting type and color, or the ability to opt for a flushmount style as well. A wedding album is an heirloom, the first one for your new family. It is something that will outlast mostly anything else you will purchase in life, hence the importance of doing it right the first time. This is where your wedding photos belong. It is the appropriate venue to display and enjoy your wedding photography investment. It’s anticlimactic to have your wedding photos sitting in a commercially available flimsy photobook that will look tattered and tired after a short couple years. A wedding album is a museum quality book; something that lives on your coffee table and can be enjoyed by you and your spouse as well as friends and family when they come over. Here are some photos of one of our Blueflash albums.

There are a lot of terms used to describe album offerings. Firstly and most importantly, always ask to see an example album from your photographer. This gives you a hands on chance to see if they’re actually selling you an album or a photobook. Buyer beware if your photographer is selling a photobook under the guise of an album. Of course photobooks cost less, and for obvious reasons. As mentioned earlier, an album is an investment that gives you returns throughout your whole life. It needs to be thought of in that manner.

The second things that is really confusing about wedding albums is the terminology used to describe how many pages are in it. The three common terms are pages, spreads, and sides. A side is simply one side of a page. If you had a book opened up in front of you, one of the visible pages would count as a side. A spread would be both visible pages in your open book, so basically a spread equals two sides. A page is more ambiguous, as some people will use page to describe a physical page (which consists of a front and back) and others use page to describe one side of a physical page (think of it as numbered pages in a book, each side has its own number). How can you keep it straight? Ask your wedding photographer.

Ask your photographer what brand of album they offer. Once you know that, you can do some of your own research about it. Blueflash offers Queensberry Albums exclusively. We have found them to be the absolute highest quality of everything and anything that is available. We’re proud of what we photograph for our brides and grooms, and we don’t want our images to end up in some halfway decent album. It does us and it does you no good.

Hopefully that helps as you wade through the world of wedding albums. If you’re still confused, send us an email and we can set up a time for you to come by and check out some examples! We’d love to have you.

Next we’ll be talking about photography post-production. What is it and how does it affect you?

If you missed the intro to this series, you can catch it right here – How To Choose Your Rhode Island Wedding Photographer Series Introduction.