Johannes has been posting on Queensberry Connects for several months now. It's been great to have a regular photographer perspective, and personally we've found his insights and opinions inspiring. We asked him to contribute to our interview series by sharing his thoughts on album design. In the conversation, Ian asks him to expand on several posts he's written about the benefits of getting to know your clients before the wedding, and his "six secrets" to designing a great album... He also questions Johannes about how he interacts with his clients, his workflow and the part Photoshop plays. To View More >>

Late last year Ian and I caught up with award winning photographer Bruce Gabites at his new Auckland studio. He'd just won his eighth straight Kodak Gold award  in the Wedding Album category, and we wanted to find out his secret... We spent a morning talking with him about why he enters photography competitions and what makes him so successful, the affect winning awards has on his business, and albums – the part they  play in his packages, and how he goes about selling them. To listen to our interview with Bruce Gabites click here (22 mins). Cheers, Nigel PS Bruce recently shared some To View More >>

So there you are, looking through the expensive bit of glass on the front of your camera at two people you hardly know, thinking how do I make them look good? Is it a trick with the light? Is it a 'looking good' filter under the Artistic Filter menu in Photoshop? Is it making them really, really small in the image so you can't tell anyway, but man oh man that scenery is spectacular? Is it that they paid you SOOO much that they believe they will look good regardless of what you do, a bit like the 'Emperor's new photographer'? Is it that the photograph itself looks good, so by association/participation To View More >>

The Junction has been a bit quiet lately so I thought I would talk to you about what the developers have been brewing. I have a lot of fruit trees at my place but two of my favorites are a Peachcot and a Peacharine. These are cross pollinations between a peach and an apricot and a peach and a nectarine. Individually beautiful to eat, but when you blend the two together you get something special. The guys at Queensberry and Photojunction have been doing a bit of cross pollinating of their own. Press albums are the new kid on the block for us. Taking two products, both beautiful in their own right, To View More >>

Mac OSX Lion is exciting new software, but before you install it there are a few things to think about: 1. You'll lose access to all your old PowerPC applications. It's been six years since Apple transitioned to Intel processors, and with the introduction of OSX Lion you will no longer be able to run PowerPC based software. Rosetta kept the old software running pretty smoothly, so you could be in for a few surprises. For starters I had to upgrade Microsoft Office. Never thought of that! 2. Closer to home, you will no longer be able to run Photojunction Retro (yes, there are still a handful of To View More >>

Queensberry's colour correctors are passionate about their work and achieving a result that pleases you, but even if you're not using their services the way they approach the job is worth thinking about. When they get an order, the first thing our colour correctors do is open up all the layouts to get a 'feel' for the overall colour of the album. Their goal is to optimise key elements like flesh tones or a bride's dress, and to achieve a consistent, natural look across page layouts and the entire album. Often we see albums where individual images have been tweaked without thought for how they To View More >>

As our colour correction policy outlines, when you order Full Colour Service we colour-correct your images so as to optimise natural skin-tones and achieve consistency across all the images in the album. However, if you run Photoshop actions or add special effects/tones to your images and the desired effect differs from these guidelines, we'd ask that you leave a quick note on your order to let us know, so we don't undo the work you've done on them. It's easy to leave notes in Photojunction: - Add notes to specific apertures by right-clicking on an image and selecting the 'Add/Edit Aperture To View More >>

Click here to watch on Vimeo. I've never met Crash Taylor, but I've been looking forward to interviewing him because of this endearing habit he has of poking his head above the parapet and getting shot at. As in this post, for example, which I published because he was nice enough to call Queensberry "the Tiffany of wedding albums". I didn't mean to buy into a storm, but I did anyway – as you can see from the post comments. You can read the full brouhaha on DWF if you're keen. For the record, I think it's hard to argue with "cheap publicity" (is there any other kind?) and when I spoke to him To View More >>

Ok, the coach has said to pass it to the backs and they will chip and chase. For those who don't know what that means, stop a Kiwi in the street and ask. Or an Aussie. Maybe a Brit or the odd South African … although they do tend to get their forwards to drive it up the middle and kick the pill between the sticks. Sorry, I digress. Coach wants me back on the field, keep it short and get over the line. Come on, Ref, blow the whistle and let's get started! 6. Alignment tools OK, I'm cheating a bit here – this isn't a button but a complete tool kit. But get these working for you and life becomes To View More >>

Click here to watch the video on Vimeo. My father's family came from Westhoughton, only twenty miles or so from where Brett and Kristie Harkness have their studio in the North of England, so we're practically neighbours. Brett's a northerner born and bred (Newcastle), but Kristie's from Saskatchewan, where the population density is only slightly more than that of New Zealand supporters at an English rugby match. In the first of a two-part interview Kristie and Brett tell Ian how they got from working on a cruise ship to their high end studio, and: learning the business side of photography; letting To View More >>