T
he big payoff of the wedding day is the album. It's what every wedding photographer has worked so hard to produce and it is the
object that the couple will cherish for a lifetime. The wedding album
is changing drastically, as you will see. Still, album design is basically the same thing as laying out a book, and there are some basic design principles that should be followed. Like any good story, a wedding album has a beginning, a middle and an end. For the most part, albums are layed out chronologically. However, there are now vast differences in the presentation, primarily caused by the digital
page-layout process. Often, events are jumbled in favor of themes or other methods of organization. There must be a logic to the layout, though, and it should be apparent to everyone who examines the album. • DESIGN ELEMENTS Left- and Right-Hand Pages. Look at any well designed book or magazine and study the images on the left- and right-hand pages. They are decidedly different but have one thing in common. They lead the eye into the center of the book, commonly referred to as the "gutter." These layouts use the same design elements photographers use in creating effective images—leadin lines, curves, shapes, and patterns. If a line or pattern forms a C shape, it is ideal for the left-hand page, since it draws the eye into the gutter and across to the right-hand page. If an image is a backwards C shape, it is ideal for the right-hand page. Familiar shapes like hooks or loops, triangles or circles are used in the same manner to guide the eye into the center of the two-page spread and across to the right-hand page.
This stunning page by Australian wedding photographer Yervant combines a bleed image on the right with inset photos on the left. Yervant used the chiffon of the gown as a background for the insets. Notice how he used varying densities of the background to provide balance to the much larger image on the right.