We met Jeff Youngren and his wife Erin (The Youngrens) a couple of years ago at WPPI and they've been on board with PJ ever since. Danny's received numbers of calls from Jeff about ideas for new Photojunction features, and it was one of those that is partly to thank for the new integration of albumexposure with Photojunction. 1) How do you like the albumexposure online album proofing feature? Why should others try it out? "To me, the Albumexposure/PJ integration is a game changer in the industry - never before has something so common been integrated so well into the whole design process. I'm blown To View More >>

The New York Times caused a ruckus a couple of days ago with an article pointing out the negative impact on professional photographers of a number of trends: the decline of the print media and therefore print advertising; the rise of digital imaging, stock photography and photo sharing sites; the flow-on opportunities for pro-am enthusiasts who don't face the same commercial imperatives. Christian Oth runs an upscale Manhattan studio. Here's his response - Ed. The New York Times posted an article about how photography is on a shrinking path. It is an interesting assessment of the state of assignment To View More >>

Our dear friend, Ian. Most of you haven't met him, but there's a good chance he's saved your bacon once or twice. Ian Cameron has been a crucial member of the Photojunction team, and is leaving us to head back down-the-line to his home town. The trend in the tech industry is to skip jobs every 18 months or so looking for the new best thing, but that hasn't been the case for us and certainly not for Ian. Ian has been with us for 6 years, I hazard a guess he's answered over 40,000 emails and 12,000 phone calls! This doesn't include tireless work on resources, bug busting, and in the ol' days, CD To View More >>

Last post I said we didn't get married in a castle. This time I get to admit we didn't drive Bentleys to the venue. I'm starting to feel quite a man of the people! ... I'm not a car guy. The two cars I've owned have been hand-me-downs from my mum, and I prefer to ride my Vespa. You get the picture. But the guys' one job at a wedding is to choose the car - the colour and make and model and size ... and it proved to be a little harder than I expected... Kayla grew up driving BMWs and Audis, so I wanted something a little different. A couple of Bentleys would have been nice. But it turns out finding To View More >>

A couple of weeks ago I posted about aggravating business policies and touch points, and asked readers to tell us about the things we do that's frustrating! We received three comments. One I've mentioned already, and the other two also raise important issues. Katherine (not her real name) emailed her account manager to say she doesn't like Photojunction. More important, she doesn't like feeling pressured by Queensberry into using it. She feels that if QBY were truly customer focused she wouldn't feel this pressure and could continue in the way that's suited her perfectly for the last seven years. To View More >>

Is it just me or are we all (suppliers to the wedding industry) suffering from our clients' "fear of commitment"? The numbers of bookings are down, the time between booking and getting married is getting shorter. "It's the Recession," we cry, and it's almost true. It's not the recession, it's the fear of it. How can we overcome that fear? This is just a question, but ... are we better to say, "We'll give you a 20% discount" or, "We can be flexible?" What does "flexible" mean? It might refer to payment terms. It might mean they can start with a 'shoot only' package and add the trimmings later – To View More >>

You've probably got it that I'm a Seth Godin fanboy. Every day I get my daily dose of something to think about. Posting about the digital revolution in our industry reminded me of this quote. It's from a very long post about the music industry, but it'll bounce ideas round your head: "The new thing is never as good as the old thing, at least right now. "Soon, the new thing will be better than the old thing will be. But if you wait until then, it’s going to be too late.  Feel free to wax nostalgic about the old thing, but don’t fool yourself into believing it’s going to be here forever. It To View More >>

Remember your first time? Doing whatever. Maybe photographing your first wedding? Years back when Subway turned up in New Zealand it took me 10 minutes and enough questions to drive mum up the wall to finally place my order. Why? Because I didn't know how. I've just committed to spending a lot of money on our wedding photography, but before I did, I was nervous. Not so much because of the money, but because I wasn't sure what I'd get for it. It was my first time. I'm in the industry, talk to photographers all the time, and write articles about marketing and business every day.  But I still felt To View More >>

If you're finding this year tough, and you've said, or thought, what's wrong, I'm not doing anything different... right there may be your problem. Just as things changed when you switched from film to digital, or PC to Mac, or Nikon to Canon, things have changed with the end of the party economy... Have you heard how much the Las Vegas convention industry is suffering because it's not a good look for corporations to go there to "party" when times are tough? This is probably not the best time to be selling party souvenirs. Your work needs to be significant, worthwhile, to survive the end of the To View More >>