This post won't mean much to those of you who's knowledge of social media is limited to, "You know, Facebook and Twitter etc". But the rest of us are trying to get good at it without feeling like it consumes all our time. Anyway, I've just been asked my opinions about automation and social media. It's something I feel strongly about, and my advice is to "approach with caution". Here's why. 1. We're in the 'intimacy business', and automation is usually the the enemy of intimacy. If I skype my wife, "Hi darling – love you!", we both feel good about it. It was impulsive and heartfelt. Automate it 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 >>

I have taken up a temporary position helping out with the Photojunction support team. One thing that I have noticed is that people seem to have more problems with the mechanics of Photojunction not fitting into their own experience or habits. Hardly ever does anybody ask for design advice. I wonder if it is the same with photography. People will ask about technical things like lighting and composition but much less often about content and emotion. ARE WE TOO SHY? I don't think so! As photographers we are called upon to be the creative voice for our clients. Is it that we don't like to ask for help? To View More >>

The new final of Photojunction will be out in a few days and it has a new feature that may affect you. First, to set the scene, our matted albums were designed to be constructed mainly of "standard" (single) sides, as opposed to panoramas. But lately we've noticed that one or two of our clients are designing with heaps of panoramas, more than the book can accommodate. This puts more thickness into the spine of the book than it's designed for, and so stresses it in various ways. For the last year or so our goal has been to make PJ smart enough to stop people from designing an album that we can't To View More >>

Follow the links for "the story so far" in our series on the recession... Yes, times will be tough for a while but you shouldn't assume the sky is falling. It makes no sense to sacrifice your business and market reputation to survive the short term challenge. Instead you may need to pull your horns in and find ways to prosper while others decline. A good place to start is by analysing your budget and business model, and we have a spreadsheet to help with that. Most people react to the threat of declining sales by saying, "I've gotta cut my costs". Everyone needs to work out their own figures, but To View More >>

Kathryn tweeted Ian about his blog post on selling to men, saying her studio actually did better with guys than girls. He asked her if she'd mind sharing with us - Nigel Just like Johannes, I read Ian's comments the other day about selling to men with great interest, because of late, we've noticed a real trend in our business: Grooms seem to like us more than brides do! While that's actually mildly alarming in one way (we don't want brides NOT to like us!), it's also a good thing. It means we don't need to worry about the grooms seeming bored, terrified, or otherwise un-engaged with us and what To View More >>

Imagine taking this to a wedding. Here's a clever advertising campaign by Samsung promoting the NX11... Get noticed. Cheers, Nigel To View More >>

Man about town Jerry Ghionis is a great supporter of Photojunction and spreads the word through his various speaking engagements. 1) What sort of feedback do you hear about Photojunction? After many years of not doing my own album plans, I have now gone back to designing my albums again.  Since I now run a boutique studio, my involvement in the pre-production and album design process is very important.  Not being a technically minded person naturally, I downloaded the trial version of Photojunction and pretty much learned how to use it in about 10 minutes.  What I noticed immediately about it To View More >>

You may have noticed our email has been down for the past couple of days. We're glad to report that the problem has apparently now been fixed (a damaged cable) and we're all back online. Fingers crossed! Emails sent to us while the server was down may be a little delayed in getting to our inboxes but we'll respond as soon as we can. Our apologies again for the inconvenience. It's a relief to be back on line. To View More >>

You may have noticed our email has been down for the past couple of days. We're glad to report that the problem has apparently now been fixed (a damaged cable) and we're all back online. Fingers crossed! Emails sent to us while the server was down may be a little delayed in getting to our inboxes but we'll respond as soon as we can. Our apologies again for the inconvenience. It's a relief to be back on line. To View More >>