As a photographer, your creativity is your super-power. It’s what sets you apart, what draws clients to you, and what fills your work with meaning. But when your days are spent juggling inboxes, invoices, timelines, edits, orders, banking, and endless other to-dos, it’s easy for that creative spark to fizzle out. Here’s the truth: you don’t need less structure to be more creative — you need better systems. Think of systems as the scaffolding that holds your business up — so your creativity can roam freely within it. Strong systems take care of the repetitive To View More >>

In many markets Covid is likely to limit the size of weddings —  and therefore wedding photography — for some months yet. And with all the restrictions and uncertainty many weddings are likely to be postponed until next season. But there's an upside! Any 2020 weddings delayed until 2021 and 2022 could make those years busier than normal! Which will be a great "problem" to have, as long as you can cope with the extra work. What that means…  • This year albums will be very important as a way to maximise revenue and profit from wedding clients — both current To View More >>

Last Update 12 August, 2020 Hi everyone, As you may know, after a local community outbreak Auckland is back to Covid Level 3, at least until the end of this week, with the rest of New Zealand at Level 2. As previously, we are able to continue working under Level 3, but with certain limitations: — All our “desk-based” staff, including customer support, order processing, admin, colour correction and album design can now work from home, and will continue to do so. — We cannot allow customer contact of any kind. That includes order pickups from the Bindery. — Our Bindery To View More >>

We’re introducing one of the biggest changes to our book and album line-up in years. Today’s email is to tell you all about it. Our next will be to celebrate with two special offers! For years we’ve offered “free” services with all our albums — free colour correction, free album design, free personal titles, cover motifs and so on. Then, last year, we began experimenting with “unbundling” those services. In other words setting prices for “just the album”, with extra charges for the services if you wanted them. That’s proved so popular To View More >>

In 1981, I was on a fishing boat chugging from Tulagi to Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands, taking the Asian Development Bank auditor to catch his plane. He said to me, “Have you heard of a company called Apple?” Ah, no. “They could change your life”, he said. “Anybody can have a computer now, and just imagine what it could do in your warehouse.” Back then, managing a boat yard in the Solomons involved importing everything from hammers and nails, and nuts and bolts, to the Caterpillar engines that drove the ten tuna pole and line catcher boats we were building. Our warehouse was a To View More >>

Wading through our "how-to" posts was quite a job. Trying to single out the best was just as difficult, but worth the effort. Here are my favourites. Hopefully you'll find them handy when dealing with Queensberry and Photojunction, and evaluating your own workflow... There's so much good stuff in the  Smooth Sailing series I reckon you should check them all, but here are a few: Photo Front covers (easy peasy) - If designing Photo Front covers sounds hard. It's not. Here's how to easily do it. What can delay your orders? -  Here are a few simple things that frequently delay people's orders (long To View More >>

We're describing the perfect way to send us your print-and-bind order... After exporting your files you definitely shouldn't jump straight to LabFTP and send us the files - we wouldn't know what to do with them! Instead, always use the Remix Order Wizard. (You'll find it under the Album menu). Remix will validate your order and create an order "bundle" that contains everything we'll need to process your order - provided you follow these instructions: 1. Run your order through the Send Order Wizard. You'll find a tutorial here. The Wizard will ask what service you want (eg Print & Assemble) To View More >>

What if you want us to print your cover image, but nothing else? 1. When you fire up the Remix Order Wizard , choose either the "Assemble From Prints Supplied" or Don't Assemble" option. 2. On the same screen the Wizard will offer a place to include "support files" for your album supplier. Open your folder of High-Res Export files and drag in a copy of the cover image (don't double up by sending it to your lab to print as well). 3. Remix may ask you if you want us to print the cover image (generally it'll be obvious what you want, in which case Remix won't ask). Be sure to say Yes. 4. When the To View More >>

Cover layout design in PJ Remix Here are the first steps in preparing a perfect, hassle-free print-and-bind order, really fast. 1. First, upgrade to PJ Remix. If you have already, thank you. 2. Use Remix to design your cover as well as your page layouts. You'll get to frame and crop the cover image yourself, see exactly what it looks like and be sure that it looks good. For example, here you can see how much of the image in the photo front cover layout above has been cropped away. No problem in this case, but many images won't be suitable: 3. Export your cover AND page layouts using Remix's Export To View More >>

I always enjoy Tom Fishburne's Brand Camp, and his latest cartoon makes a timely point. We've just finished Queensberry "Sales Week", where we we bring together our Account Managers and Support People from round the world to talk with the Design and IT teams, the Bindery, the Lab and Order Processing - and to each other of course. Like many of our clients, some of our people work alone most of the time and they enjoy the chance to mix it up. If that's the right expression – actually I admire the way everyone works so well together! But it's hard work for them. I was with them for a day, and To View More >>