Custom Senior Albums
By far our most popular Senior creation is our Senior Albums.
These are custom, individually designed albums featuring images from your Senior portrait session. Additionally, these albums may feature images that we have taken of you engaged in other activities - sporting events, hanging out with friends, etc. - if we have been commissioned to photograph those activities.
Each album is designed to best display the images available and to capture as much of your individual personality as we can. We keep an eye out not just for beautiful portraits or peak action images, but for fun images that show energy and personality.
Once we have completed the design, the albums are professionally printed and hand-bound by a company dedicated solely to producing these gorgeous albums.
Below are a few page spreads from a few of our albums. Keep in mind that these are full spreads (2 pages) in an album and when opened fully would be 18 inches wide by 12 inches tall.
We have also uploaded several full album designs for viewing.
Why an Album?
The intention behind our albums is to create a family document that will last a lifetime and more. Our goal is to create a stunning book of images that can be shared decade after decade with family and friends.
Micheal has always loved design and layout and one of his favorite aspects of wedding photography is the albums that we design for the couples we photograph. When Micheal decided to take a brief hiatus from wedding photography a few years ago, he knew that he was going to miss designing albums.
It was just about this same time that Micheal's grandmother, Polly, celebrated her 80th birthday in the form of a surprise party/family reunion. Some thoughtful family member brought a collection of pictures of Polly as a young lady and it was the obvious emotion and excitement that Polly displayed while going through the images of herself as a teenager and with her friends that Micheal really came to see the importance of the images that the family studio captured for the young volleyball athletes we so often photographed and their future families.
It occurred to Micheal that custom albums would be a great way to preserve and present our images for future family members. Merging our sports photography with our already unusual portrait photography, these albums could be a very unique and valuable record of these years of an athlete's life.
It turns out Micheal was right. Since their introduction, interest in our custom portrait albums has been intense. In fact, our albums are amongst our most popular portrait products and it is desire for an album that leads most people to us as portrait clients.
A few album designs.
We have uploaded several full album layouts for you to view. Click the links below to view the album designs.
Chelsey Trojan. This is Chelsey, who we have been photographing since she was a Freshman in highschool. She's now a Sophomore at Sac City College and still plays volleyball - and we still photograph her as we are the team photographers for Sac City College Volleyball! This album features images from Chelsey's Sophomore year in highschool through her Senior year, as well as her Senior Portraits. View Album
Kaitlyn Sather. When we did Kaitlyn's Senior portraits, we'd been photographing Kaitlyn as a volleyball player for some time. Kaitlyn is now playing volleyball for UCLA, but at the time we did her portraits we traveled to her home town of Santa Rosa to photograph her. When we asked Kaitlyn if there were any particular images she would like us to attempt, she had two specific requests - being pulled on her skateboard by her dog "Mocha Joe" and jumping on her trampoline. We loved both ideas! View Album
Chelsey Johnson. Chelsey was a new client of ours that we met after she graduated. She's a softball player, but we never had the opportunity to photograph her in action. Chelsey's album is purely a portrait album. We photographed her in and around her beautiful home in Roseville and designed this album for her. View Album.
Alyssa Pitkin. We have been photographing Alyssa since she was 14 years old. This album features Alyssa playing volleyball in Oahu, Hawaii, a special portrait session on Waikiki beach, Alyssa and her highschool volleyball team hanging out on the beaches as well as more portraits of Alyssa in Clovis, her home town, and playing for her highschool team against a rival highschool in a home match Micheal traveled to photograph. It is our largest and most extensive Senior Album to date. View Album.
Sarah, Casey & Chrissy. These three albums were for a group of friends we knew from photographing volleyball. Wanting to try out an idea he had, Micheal invited them to the State Fair where he and Jason photographed them hanging out and having a great time. The goal was to create some wonderful images of their friendship. These images, along with senior portraits and volleyball were then combined into three unique albums.
How do we get "action" pictures for our album?
Many of the album designs featured on this page feature not only portraits, but action images as well.
This is often a result of knowing and photographing these athletes prior to having photographed their Senior portraits.
However, we do offer a custom commission for action sessions such as this. We will not mix shooting action or activity based images in the middle of a portrait session - these should be done separately.
So we offer an "Action Session" at the same price level as our Portrait Session. Simply book us for a date and time and pay for a session and we will come out and photograph an "Action Session" for you - be it a high school volleyball match, waterpolo, diving, swimming, golf, soccer, basketball, baseball, football, tennis - it doesn't matter. We're accomplished sports photographers and would be happy to photograph actual competition action for you.
The images photographed during this session would then be available for use in your book, or for purchase as single images, or for use in custom collages design.
Album Prices & Payment
Naturally, on seeing such a unique and obviously time consuming product as our album, a common question is one of price.
The albums are intensely time consuming to design - each image is individually selected for placement in the book, custom adjusted and then laid out.
Album prices range from a starting price of $950 to $1500 for most albums. (But don't worry - you can design bigger and more expensive albums if you like!)
We undersetand that our albums are often more than a family initially plans to spend on Senior portraits. To help address this, we are willing to break an album up into however many payments that you may require. Album delivery will take place upon full payment.
This has proven to be a popular and successful way to make albums available to families that might otherwise think they couldn't afford them.
In the end, we WANT you to be able to have an album, so we will work with you to make sure that you can have one.