If capturing a fleeting moment thrills you … if beautiful colour makes your heart beat faster … if you dream about composition in your sleep… if you love telling stories with pictures - we'd love to hear from you. We're after images to showcase on our website and in our new season sample albums and books, as well as in our blogs and marketing pieces. We’re looking for sets of around 80 images, but to enter all you have to do is send us TEN low-res images* from up to TWO different events - a wedding, portrait session, or whatever you happen to shoot - and email them to us at showcase@queensberry.com. To View More >>

After talking to Jessica Mills from NZ Colour Management, I thought we should bring in someone from the front lines! Philip Laing is one of our lab support specialists, and if my conversation with him paints a picture of a bunch of people obsessed with quality and delivering you the best possible album, my work is done. If you get get an insight into the many ways in which our lab service is truly unique in the album business, even better! Philip is what we call a "support detective". With a stack of experience – and huge enthusiasm for photography – he's in the front line every day ensuring To View More >>

All software evolves as new features are added and new versions released. Photojunction and Photoshop are no exception, and, as PJ takes advantage of more, often newer, features of Photoshop, its "backwards compatibility" with older versions is lessened. That's why we recommend that you use Photoshop CS3 or later with Photojunction. If you use CS2 or even earlier, chances are that it will work fine, but you may occasionally find that some PSD files don't import correctly as images or templates, or that you get error messages when exporting with PS scripting. If that happens, all Support can do To View More >>

Rebecca said it right! The more you replicate other photographers the more beige you become. Be inspired by the success of other photographers and influenced by their philosophies. Be colourful, but accept that some people see beige as a safe colour. Somebody asked me how do we stand out when our audience sees us as somehow all the same ... just dearer or cheaper (light beige and dark beige). I was watching a piece on TED about a guy called Daniel Libeskind ... his work is very left of centre and clearly not beige. Watch it and listen to his talk. Take note of his word sets, Emotional To View More >>

I just made a couple of new friends, Jeff and Erin Youngren from San Diego… And it took all of a couple of minutes. Stephen and Danny first met these guys at WPPI in Vegas, and we’ve been in touch ever since. You may remember our post about their new website and promo video so I asked them to share some of their experiences around online marketing, business and their album strategy.  But it was their philosophy, not only to business, but to life, that dominated the conversation. Let’s be friends Jeff and Erin had just returned from a holiday to Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, with To View More >>

Wedding and portrait photographers are lucky.  There is an automatic point of difference built into the core of our businesses - our photography.  Other businesses selling books, bricks or ice-creams are dealing with the same commodities and therefore need to make their businesses about something other than the product, such as service, fast delivery or lifestyle branding. We start out with a product that is already differentiated - and what do many of us do? We try our hardest to look like other photographers. Why? If we use the same actions, poses and website colours as our competitors, what To View More >>

One of the most beautiful features of Queensberry Press Books is the ability to add translucent pages. The PJ team have been busy working on this feature and you can now add text and images just as easily as you can on ordinary pages. Translucents can be added just about anywhere you like using the button at the bottom of the layout window (see image below). Translucent pages can be used to overlay text over an image; or image over image. They give a whole new dimension to your book - adding a soft delicate atmosphere or "unveiling" the story. It's really a personal decision as to how much opacity To View More >>

We've now released v1.49 to fix a few minor issues in 1.48, but everything in this post is still current - Ed. In case you haven't noticed, we kiwis are very modest ;) Which is why I like announcing stuff that I didn't have much to do with, but I feel really good about, because I can sing its praises without feeling bad about myself! Anyway… The dev team have been busy busy today pushing out a new final release, and I think it's a really good one. They've put a lot of time and effort into refining features first released in v1.47, especially for Queensberry Press Books, but there's some juicy To View More >>

Forget animal sacrifice, this is about image sacrifice, and why it is - quite frankly - morally and photographically unethical! What I’m talking about here is panoramic layouts and when to 'cut' an image (and when not to). Queensberry doesn’t make leaves with prints continuous across the spine of the book, as some manufacturers do. Instead, the prints on our digital pages are split at the centreline, leaving a gap of about 2mm (about 1/16”). The reason for this is because if the print is folded - it almost invariably discolours and/or cracks. Our albums are all about protecting images rather To View More >>

Why not design your albums in Photoshop or InDesign? A lot of people do, and they're great applications – we depend on them both ourselves. A few thoughts … Adobe don't think designing your albums in Photoshop is a good idea. That's not what it's for. Adobe's page layout software is InDesign. So how much does InDesign know about wedding and portrait photographers, their workflow, their albums and their suppliers? InDesign doesn't know what DPI your lab needs, or what file type, or what size the printed layouts should be, or about bleed and trim requirements, or what colour management processes To View More >>