sarah tew photography

Hello all, I’ve just gotten back to my desk after 3 jam-packed days at the PhotoPlus Expo (a photographers conference and trade show that I look forward to every year here at the Javitz center). I went to a slew of very interesting seminars and rubbed shoulders (so to speak) with some of the industry’s most talented and forward-thinking photographers (both wedding and portrait professionals alongside commercial photographers,  fine artists and photojournalists), and of course I got to scout around on the trade show floor for the latest and greatest products to offer my clients… There’s nothing like being able to inspect an album company’s sample book styles before investing in them for my clients.

This year showed a marked improvement in the offerings available– I must say I absolutely fell in love with the styles offered by Couture Book— which is a brand new company offering absolutely gorgeous custom HAND BOUND art albums in a book-page style- up to 100 pages (50 spreads) is the minimum order per book so they look nice and thick and are FULL of images– BUT WITH FINE ART PAPERS and hand-torn edges available! Some of their book styles have these amazing embossed borders on each page around the images… AND You can ADD PRINTED VELLUM LEAVES! I’m sorry if I sound dramatic, but these are features I think are long overdue in the wedding album category… Flush mount albums can be quite stunning and are an excellent way of presenting and preserving your most treasured images from a wedding in storybook form… but these albums come with up to 100 pages AS A STANDARD! Yes, the pages are paper– bendable paper and not board-like leaves as with a Flush Mount. But in terms of the quality and style of presentation, these books have a HUGE artistic edge over anything else I’ve seen offered to photographers, and beleive me, i’ve had my eye on the options for a number of years now… I have an entire filing cabinet drawer full of the catalogs and ordering and design protocol information for basically every album and book-maker company in existence that will take orders from the U.S.

Being an experienced artist-book maker myself in my fine art practice (hand binding books from home-made prints and materials) I know good craftmanship when I see it, and trust me, this stuff is what you want. Worth every penny. I can’t wait to have some sample albums made so I can share these with clients. Until then check out their website.  I must admit I find the ‘high fashion’ vibe of the website a little unnecessary and perhaps distracting– the books could sell themselves I think, and frankly i want to see more close-up book details and less models holding books, but I did really appreciate the “making of” aspect of their opening video– you should check it out (click here).

Also I decided to invest in a sample set of metal-mural prints for my studio– these are a really cool new way of displaying images that is not that much more expensive than canvas wall prints or framed photographs– your image can be divided up into a grid and hung as a set of metal tiles that are attached with a series of rings. Sounds weird at first but given the modern decor of many NYC apartments this style can be just the thing, and it’s certainly quite the conversation piece. I can also order these with different square images in each of the plates– like 4 images of a baby’s facial expressions in a square (can’t wait to order this!) and you can pretty much order any number of plates in any configuration, and the hanging hardware is included. I was thinking if you had a big bathroom or kitchen area that frequently gets steamy and you were nervous about hanging a canvas or any other fine art you could easily hang these in such a spot without worrying about water damage at all!