Album design tips from Cloud Nine Studios Photography

© Cloud Nine Studios Photography Caty LarsonA wedding album isn’t a collection of photographs. It’s a narrative of a whirlwind day that will forever hold significance to the participants. So how do you put together an album that tells the day’s story as the couple wants to remember it?Caty Larson operates Cloud Nine Studios Photography with her husband, Terry, in Fertile, Minnesota. She’s known for album design, emphasizing personal touches like the incorporation of wedding vows and love quotes to tell a moving story that captures clients’ hearts. Having cultivated a clientele who trust her with image selection and album design, Larson has positioned herself as the expert. Understanding that Larson is well qualified to tell their story, wedding clients are typically happy to let her do her work without interference. Larson says she strives to create an album that not only tells the story of the day—the style, the emotions, the details—but also a story of the couple’s relationship.While many photographers use Adobe InDesign for album creation, Larson says, she’s remained faithful to Adobe Photoshop (“It’s a don’t-fix-it-if-it’s-not-broke type of thing”). Lately, she’s been using McKenna, based in Waterloo, Iowa, to print her lay-flat albums. She allows clients to select paper and cover styles, including leather, acrylic, or an image.Based on consultations with wedding clients, Larson understands the style of the wedding she’ll be photographing. But she’s quick to adjust her photography as she notices unexpected details that differentiate the event, keeping in mind that her ultimate job is to communicate a touching and personalized narrative of the day.Here’s what we learned about Larson’s thought process for designing Jessicah and Derek’s wedding album, which earned a merit and was entered into the General Collection in 2018’s International Photographic Competition.© Cloud Nine Studios Photography