It was a very successful evening on Friday for our design agency ALT Group at the New Zealand Design Institute's Best Awards, where they won a total of eighteen awards, three of them, including a Gold, for the rebranding work they did with us last year: The GOLD AWARD was for the overall rebranding and visual identity project, as expressed in our new website, marketing material, logo, product photography etc. SILVER AWARD: For the Queensberry bride book, a promotional booklet designed specifically for our clients to distribute to brides and grooms, to express the Queensberry brand story and highlight To View More >>

Made By Hand from Queensberry on Vimeo. Want to see what goes into making a Queensberry? We commissioned this brief movie as a way to say thank you to all the terrific people who make our albums … and who make us so proud. Johannes shot the images as he and I walked through the Queensberry Lab and Bindery one afternoon. The photography is all real and unstaged. Johannes created the video and set it to music by Amy Seeley, who has a lot of new fans. Thanks again to everyone involved, including the host of Queensberry photographers whose work you can glimpse along the way. Cheers, Ian PS If you To View More >>

Johannes posted a quote from The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams on his blog. It's about what it takes, what it means, to be real. Are you in fashion photography or reality photography? Cheers, Ian PS Surprise surprise, that's a question, not an opinion. PPS Jo and Johannes (not sure which) took the picture. And that's our grand-daughter with Lucy :) To View More >>

"I'm going to interview Simon Whitten while I'm in the UK," I said to Heather, "Short story - what springs to mind?" "Stately homes ... panoramic images ... simple, classic album designs," she said. Simon has established a solid business at the very top of the UK wedding market, and what struck me about our conversation was his confidence and clarity in talking about it. To succeed in this business requires a lot more than photographic passion and skills. You need a clear understanding of your market position, your clientele and where they come from, your brand and how you project it. The low end To View More >>

Relationships with local wedding venues are a great way to build a strong wedding and portrait business, and a beautiful display album featuring the venue works well for both parties. Simon Whitten is a long-standing and valued Queensberry client from Yorkshire in England. His association with the luxury castle hotel Swinton Park is very important to him, and for years his Queensberry sample album has rested on the piano in the drawing room. When the time came to update it, the question was “with what?” These days most of his clients tend towards the 14x10 Duo that Simon prefers. But feeling To View More >>

Simon Whitten of SMW Photography has an interesting perspective on timelessness. He says the albums he's designing today should have looked current ten or twenty years ago, not just years into the future. That's the real test of timelessness, he says. That philosophy underlies his approach to album design - simple and uncluttered. We've featured Simon's work on Queensberry Connects before, but we grabbed this album for the beautifully simple design and the thought behind it ... He created a 14x10 Duo album for clients Charlotte and James and also made a stunning 18x10 Silk display sample for the To View More >>

Chances are you've never been to Marfa, but as it happens we have. It's a tiny town set in the vastness of West Texas (population 2000+) and obviously thriving. Halfway between El Paso and the awesome Big Bend Park, Marfa is surrounded by towns in decline. It used to be a water stop on the railway, and a massive army base, but the trains went diesel and the army left town. So why isn't the town dying, like most of its neighbours seem to be? A minimalist artist called Donald Judd came to town in search of a spectacular landscape to display his massive artworks. An interesting guy ... and other To View More >>

Today we're announcing free album design and free standard colour correction on all our professional albums - Flushmount, Overlay Matted, Classic Matted and Duo. Here's why... When we're discussing how we can improve our products and services, we ask ourselves three questions: Can we make it fun? Will it save you time? Will it make you money? This time we're aiming for all three :) Many of our customers pay us to colour correct their images. Many pay us to design their albums as well. Many more wish they could afford to do the same. ALL OF YOU are going to enjoy one of two things. A fresh chance To View More >>

[caption id="attachment_17731" align="alignnone" width="500"] © James Yeats-Brown[/caption] James Yeats-Brown is a leading UK social photographer specialising in children's portraiture and the creation of family albums. He asks why shooting for a fee or commission shouldn't work in the social sector, since it's common in other areas of photography, and thinks a sales model based purely on speculative product upselling is dangerous these days - mainly thanks to new consumer-oriented products from Apple, Blurb, Photobox etc. This began as a comment on Ian's post suggesting the Shoot and Share model To View More >>

"How much for that album?"If you ask us that, and you have an approved account, we're happy to tell you.But in 40+ years, while we’ve often offered guidance, we’ve never ever told customers how much they should charge.Well I'm going to be brave and make a suggestion. Then I'm going to ask youwhat you think. But first, some background... For decades many photographers charged really high prices for their products (albums, prints, framing etc). They did this to avoid asking a reasonable fee for theirservices. You can see why. Even our wealthiest acquaintances think photographers charge To View More >>