As I have just recently gotten married - yay! - I thought I’d write a bit about planning a wedding - a nice, decent, enjoyable wedding - on a budget. Photograph by Alexander Wallace For a little background, my husband Kurt is Dutch. Now the Dutch are said to be like the Scots - just with all the generosity squeezed out of them. And I myself am very cautious when it comes to money - but at the same time I’m a designer and I love beautiful things. I came across this fantastic blog The Broke-Ass Bride which is full of great ideas on how to save money without compromising too much on the overall To View More >>

In many labs these days the only people who look at your prints are the Dispatch team. Strange as it seems, that makes sense – it's your files they’re printing, and something has to give if you want low prices. But it doesn’t make sense at Queensberry. We critique everything we print, including Print-Ready. The difference is we see the image files with Full Colour Service (because it’s our job to colour correct them) whereas we don’t see Print-Ready work until it’s printed . But why review Print-Ready work at all? Print-Ready means you edit your images yourself, and we don’t modify To View More >>

Let me tell you a story about why we're in the album business, why we believe in brand building, and why you should too. Don't tell anyone but you're looking at two early Queensberries from the days when albums weren't everything we do. It may look a bit tired but the old wallet on top has excellent provenance, as they say. In 1990 Stephen brought his new fiancée home from Brisbane to meet his family in New Zealand. He gave her the Queensberry tour, saw the wallet and asked could he have it? Heather gave it to him. (I hope she gave Sonya something too!) Years passed. We stopped making wallets. To View More >>

Ian spotted a post by New Zealand photographer Isaac de Reus of Perspectives Photography on DWF recently. It was in reply to a thread discussing whether giving your work away free for referrals was good business practice. Isaac shared this great example of how he's leveraged something he can do in return for good quality referrals. The type everyone wants. High-end. It also shows the value of keeping your finger on the wider wedding market's pulse. Thanks for sharing, Isaac - Nigel A month or so ago we approached a very high-end, exclusive venue that only recently started booking and advertising To View More >>

Jennifer from Nova Photography recently changed over to a Workspace hosted site. We had a quick chat with her about the process and why she made the switch.  Tell us about yourself and what you do! I'm a Scot/Kiwi, having lived equally on both sides of the globe, I'm a wife and a mother as well as custom portrait photographer! I love to work with families and especially love pregnancy and newborn shoots. Nothing is more amazing to me than creating everlasting memories for my clients and providing them with timeless portraits to look back on and treasure forever! I am also moving in to birth photography To View More >>

Since our re-branding last year the front flyleaf of every Queensberry album has been embossed with the new Q-mark. Why's it there? It’s simple really: to sign our work with pride and to acknowledge the craftsmanship and detailing that goes into every album we build. We're doing the same thing that you do as a photographer when you sign your work. We're branding it. Let me explain in detail what we're doing and why, because our goal is to build a brand that will support you as our clients. § Branding is primarily about getting recognised - not a "camera" but a Leica, not a "wedding album" but To View More >>

We love quality materials, and quality workmanship, and we have the deepest respect for the people behind them. I remember our first visit to the French tannery that supplies our Contemporary leathers – being awestruck by the sheer number of colourful hides hanging in the rafters, all the one gorgeous shade, and all destined for Hermès. So when we came across the Hermès travelling Festival des Metiers (Festival of Crafts) we spared a moment to touch the leather hides and watch the leather craftsman at work. What blew us away, though, was the silk-screening demonstration. As I'm sure it does To View More >>

If you follow our main Queensberry blog, you might have seen that I recently designed and ordered my own Queensberry album. (View the blog post here). Well, Stephen wandered in a while ago and saw me looking at what he assumed was my album, and asked how I liked it. "It's crap," I said. "I don't even like looking at it." He went really pale! What he didn't know is that Heather had suggested I use the exact same image files to create an album with another well known supplier. I'm not naming names, but wow - the differences are astounding. I understand that you get what you pay for, and that our To View More >>

There was quite a reaction to my post about shooting less photos, which obviously resonated with people. Check it out - there are some interesting comments from people, including from those who say they shoot a lot. I know there are some amazing photographers out there who shoot big numbers, so quantity is not necessarily at the expense of quality. However I still think it comes at a price, for both the studio and the client. I've never forgotten the first time a client asked me to design a sample album online. I was given passwords to three large online galleries and asked to choose 100 images. After To View More >>

Now you’re doing your own publishing, you have more to concern yourself with than the quality of your images. Of course people will judge you by those. You do so yourself. But they’ll also judge you by your writing, your tone of voice, your graphic design sensibilities. Plenty of people will judge you because you don’t know how to use apostrophes, or when to use i before e. These days plenty more will judge you for not re-reading before you publish, and so not noticing how predictive texting has messed up your sentences. Neither you nor I have a professional sub-editor polishing our stuff, To View More >>