I took many a Saturday morning bus ride from the Yorkshire village I lived in to the nearest town back in the 80's. It was usually a trip to meet school friends to buy a new record from Woolworths, have a look round the shops, and then share an ice-cream float in Coffee and Cream. Occasionally there was the added excitement of popping in to SupaSnaps, its bright hoarding a beacon on the corner of two main roads. I'd take out the folded collection slip from my purse and hand it over eagerly to the person behind the counter. A moment later, a yellow photo wallet would be placed in my outstretched hands. I was always too excited to wait to look at them so used to fold back the cover to the wallet and hurriedly flick through the photos in the shop, the smell of developing fluid still clinging to each image. I can still feel that excitement to this day.
Can you remember the photos with the advisory stickers placed in the corners, with an almost 'must try harder' tone to them? And the quickly taken photos at the beginning and end of the film? For me, they were usually of our cat Jaspa, or the Smash Hits posters on my wall. But this was part of the process wasn't it?
As you may have noticed, we've had a rebrand (thanks to Chris Sands, he's amazing). It felt the right time to do it as we felt our work had changed direction and our style definitely had more of a nostalgic feel. With this came a thought about what we offer as a tangible product after a family shoot, and both me and Suzi looked back to how we used to receive our photos. We wanted to recapture that special feeling, and the feeling of having an actual ‘thing’ to take home. It turns out, a lot of you miss that stuff too.
The fine art prints and the wallet we present them in are that ‘thing’. Importantly for us, the wallet itself was designed and made by people we know right here in Hebden Bridge, our Yorkshire hometown. Chris designed it after we'd looked at a selection of photo wallets. He'd picked up this amazing Kodak one on a trip to Australia, and that became our inspiration.
We loved the attention to detail, the notes inside and the stitching. Suzi found a stack more on-line, and we spent many an evening pouring over them.
We loved some of the tag lines the wallets had.
And the box at the back to put in the date of the shoot and location, it becomes part of the story. After the design, we took it to the fab folk at The Egg Factory here in Hebden Bridge. Every wallet is hand screen printed by Amy, and then stitched with bright yellow thread, we really wanted to keep this detail.
Inside the wallet, there's a pocket for 24 photos, we wanted to keep this number as a nod to a roll of film.
These are printed on beautiful matte photo paper, the colour is so deep and rich. You've got to feel them, they're so tactile!
And then there's a pocket for the contact sheets to show you all the photos we took on your shoot. We wanted them to look a little like the negatives you get in a wallet.
There's a small pocket below that holds 2 cards, a gift to you and a referral card for a friend.
We wanted you to enjoy having something to hand, something to pass around, and even smell the ink if that’s what moves you most!
To see more about our portrait shoots, here's a link to our portrait page.
What will you do with your prints after the shoot, put them in an album? Frame a selection for the wall? Whatever you decide to do with your photos, we know you’ll enjoy them for years to come.
There’s a little bit more about our photo wallets in our launch film below.
