'LIVING WITH THE PARENTS'
Benefits to photographers - extra revenue!
by Mark Witney

A wedding – one of the biggest, if not the biggest, single event in most people’s lives. But not just for the bride and groom; for the parents of the bride and groom, it is the day they see their son or daughter mature in to married life.

Therefore, whilst wedding photography is primarily focussed on capturing the memories of the day for the bride and groom, capturing memories for the parents of the bride and groom is often an extra ‘sideline’ for wedding photographers, up-selling their packages to also include albums for each set of parents, creating an all important channel of extra revenue per wedding.

Spicer Hallfield are committed to providing a wealth of album styles and sizes to suit the presentation demands of all wedding photographers, from main albums to parent’s and keepsake albums.

In years gone by, the market was heavily dominated by traditional style albums, as the only really style option available, with Spicer Hallfield offering a vast range of traditional style albums to suit all tastes and budgets. However, times have moved on, and in today’s digitally driven industry, and after the continual change of fashions and tastes, Spicer Hallfield have been forced to reassess their presentation solutions and move with the times.

So, where the photographer’s choice of albums used to be as easy as selecting a traditional main album and a smaller version for the parents, the increased options for style and format of today’s albums makes it a more varied choice.

This is especially the case with parent’s albums, with Spicer Hallfield noticing a significant decline in demand for the small traditional albums that used to suit traditional parent’s albums so well.

But it’s now time for a new era and for Spicer Hallfield to look to focus its product development towards the modern styles and formats today’s clients are asking of their photographers. Hence, Spicer Hallfield’s decision to discontinue its range of ‘Consort’ size albums, with the low demand making the albums cost ineffective to manufacture.

This decision wasn’t taken lightly, and Spicer Hallfield needed to be confident it had the new style and format of parent’s albums to replace the Consort albums of old before making such a decision, ensuring that Spicer Hallfield offer parent’s albums to photographers and clients who already demand a new style and format of parent’s album, and for photographers and clients who haven’t yet migrated.

Digital Art Books

Of the new styles and formats available, digital art books are the premium, top end of the market choice. As a high quality hand finished album fully consisting of flush mounted, digitally designed pages, digital art books are becoming a popular choice for main albums as a quality, modern and stylish album.

Digital art books are also a great choice when it comes to parent’s albums, as the nature of the album’s page format allows for a simple aspect ratio resize, meaning that a 14”x10” main album can easily be resized to a 7”x5” parent’s album, or a 3.5”x2.5” bridesmaid’s album, and also available in square format sizes such as 12”x12” and 8”x8”, all resized with the minimum of work – a simple resize of the design for the main, bigger album.

Self Adhesive Albums

As well as digital art books, self-adhesive albums are proving a very popular choice in today’s market, both for main albums and parent’s albums, and Spicer Hallfield are at the forefront for self-adhesive album technology.

Having offered self-adhesive ‘Image Books’ for a number of years, self-adhesive albums are generally seen as a budget digital art book, providing the same great flexibility of page layout design and general look and feel, using pages mounted with self-adhesive that allow the photographer to design and mount their own prints to complete the album.

Due to the Image Book’s success, Spicer Hallfield has since developed their self-adhesive albums to a 2nd generation – repositionable self-adhesive technology. Using a pattern of micro adhesive dots, prints can be mounted and removed from pages any number of times, without damaging the print or the album, reducing the risk of incorrectly aligning prints on the pages.

This new repositionable technology, exclusive to Spicer Hallfield in the UK, now forms the basis of all new Spicer Hallfield self-adhesive albums – Manhattan, Madison, Mini Books and Pocket Books, etc.

As with digital art books, a design for a 14”x10” self-adhesive based Manhattan album can easily be resized for a 7”x5” Manhattan parent’s album; a great advantage over traditional matted albums, and a good example of one of the reasons for digital’s emerging dominance.

Similar to the Manhattan album, the Madison album is a slight variation, featuring a wrap round magnetic cover in black or white with a 2.5”x2.5” cover aperture, available in square size formats.

Seen as the modern ‘traditional’ album, Madison albums have been used to great effect in the wedding market – so much so, that after only originally being available as a 10”x10” album, Spicer Hallfield are set to expand the size options up to 12”x12” and down to 8”x8” in October 2008; again providing the simple resize option for parent’s albums offered by digital art books and Manhattan albums.

Completing the self-adhesive options, 6”x4” Mini Books and 3.5”x2.5” Pocket Books can both fulfil the requirements of a small scale album suitable for parents, bridesmaids, grandparents and guests, depending on the desired style and available budget, etc.

Avanta Range

Moving back towards a more traditional option, the popular Spicer Hallfield Avanta album now has a ‘younger brother’ in the form of a 6”x8” album to accompany the original 10”x12” album. Available in the same cover options, which have recently been expanded to include the new Antique Leather colour options, both Avanta album sizes compliment each other perfectly as a main album and a parent’s album.

Positiv Albums

Lastly, for a very modern and contemporary parent’s album, look no further than the Positiv range of ‘coffee table’ style albums. With innovation through instinct design and original features, Positiv has attention to detail that is second to none and are the ideal products to help photographers set themselves apart from the rest.

As well as Positiv’s simple and elegant hard-covered albums, which are available in various size and colour options, Positiv’s Chicago Box Sets are the ultimate stylish way of presenting a small collection of images to parents. Supplied in a wooden presentation box, of which the lid doubles up as a frame, Chicago Box Sets are available in a variety of colour options and sit perfectly on any window sill or table, ensuring they don’t get put away in cupboards to gather dust, unlike the fate of some conventional albums.

Using the traditional method of matted pages, Positiv albums are both modern and traditional, with their contemporary style setting them apart from traditional albums of the past.


Spicer Hallfield have a vast choice of appealing options to fulfil the demand for parent’s albums, very in-fitting with today’s photography trends and allowing photographers to present their work in desirable and quality products their clients expect for their hard-earned money.

To find out more, visit the Spicer Hallfield Online Store, or call customer services on 01844 299600.