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High-End Portrait Albums In 10 Minutes

October 24, 2011

I’ve long been an advocate of portrait albums for many reasons. When I first started shooting professionally on my own, I would only do album shoots. My fixed fee would include the shoot, an album and then all prints came later. That’s all I did. It was a ton of fun and I always got to do what I wanted to do. Actually, sounds like a fun business model even today.

I love portrait albums for a few reasons. First of all, a portrait album is a fantastic way to preserve a moment in time of an individual or a family–same as it is with a wedding. Albums preserve prints longer than prints will last on the wall. A well-bound portrait album printed on photographic paper will last well over 100 years and probably over 200 years. Since the prints are protected from the light, the longevity of the album is incredible. They store easily and will be around a lot longer than framed prints or canvases will stay on a wall. I’m not advocating replacing big prints, but albums are a great addition to a profitable studio.

In addition to being a great family heirloom, portrait albums can be very profitable. It’s a strong mom that can say no to a beautiful portrait album filled with their kids and family. I haven’t met many myself.

Here is a model shoot I did last week with my good friend Randy Kepple. When shooting it, I did it as a quasi-senior shoot, so I would have some good examples for designing a mock senior album. It was great fun, and we were able to get some great shots. A big thank you goes out to Amanda for being such a great model, her first time doing it.

Some Portrait Albums

I prefer 10-page portrait albums. I also think that 10 pages really fits most portrait shoots. Even a mother can get sick of their kid after 20 pages. :)

Here are a couple of options:

Finao Elements and Upper Elements

can be found here.

West Coast Albums

Can be found here.

Costs & Profit

Below, I’m going to show you how I designed a 14-page album in under 10 minutes. Even if it took you three times as long, a full 30 minutes, your total cost for the album, prints and your design time would be under $200. It’s easy to use PPA’s recommended mark up and sell these albums for $600-$800 depending on whether you are working out of your home or a retail space.

Now the Fun

I’ve taken my images, browse in Bridge (just use Bridge as a file browser), not even separated out, and made this album. Here’s how I did it.

The Album

Here is the album in its entirety.

If you would like to use these as templates, just add them to Album Builder with the Extension “amd” for Amanda.

[button url=”https://fundydesigner.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Amanda-Album.zip” target=”_self” size=”small” style=”coolblue” ]Download[/button]

[button url=”http://fundysos.screenstepslive.com/s/1627/m/2414/l/45952-Installing-a-New-Set-Of-Templates” target=”_self” size=”small” style=”coolblue” ]How to Install[/button]

Do it all in Fundy Designer!

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