I may be in the minority on this one, but I offer packages that offer the bride the option of hiring me for the photography only. There are a lot of photographers out there that have an option of shooting the wedding and giving the bride the files. If you are one of the brides who have the rights to your files, you have options.
1. You can design your book by yourself. The positives are that if you are good at photoshop, you can have a book printed and save a lot of money. On the downside, it is a lot of work and may take a ton of time and the better and best books will only sell to photographers. You will also need to put much more time into the files, just color correcting and sharpening (standard with most shoot and burn packages) is usually not enough to make the picture sing. You cannot expect a photographer to do a ton of extra work on 400-2000 files, it is not economical (1000 files@1 minute per file is about 2 days of retouching and 1 minute is an underestimation of the time to make a file perfect).
Cleveland wedding photography showing how files are improved
2. You can have your photographer, another photographer (like me), or a retoucher work on the files you want in your book. The downside is cost but it will still save you money but will still not give you access to premium coffee table book manufacturers (unless the photographer or retoucher will include that in the cost of the retouching,(I will, email me for an estimate).
3. You can shop arround for someone to design and print your book which is the same process you used to find your photographer. You can pick out the design style you want and have creative control (my style) or use the style of the book designer (also my style). Best of luck with your wedding coffee table book.
Cleveland wedding photography at a reception for a coffee table book.
Michael Steinberg
