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 >>

Last week was fantastic! Our free design and colour correction announcement generated more comments and support suite enquiries than anything else we've ever done. And it started a lot of conversations with people about how it would work in practice, and how they could use it to increase their sales. What's driving this free service is the change in our industry, with more photographers adopting the line that albums aren't worth the time and aggravation. That attitude isn't new, and we think it's always been nonsense, but the best way to challenge it is to eliminate the "time and aggravation", 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 >>

Everyone is a media company these days. How often have you heard that? You need to get content out there - content your audience (and customers) look forward to - words and photos, blog posts and image galleries... But media companies have editors, sub-editors, graphic artists and on and on. You have you. If it takes half an hour to create your content and half a day (or a hired hand) to format and publish it, you're screwed. It just won't happen. The only people who need high production values are people who get hired to practice them. Video producers need awesome videos. You need awesome photos. To View More >>

Last week I wrote about the latest David Jay hate war, and said that if a courtroom attorney asked whether I agreed with his Shoot and Share strategy - and demanded a Yes-No answer - I’d have to say, “Yes I do.” Why? Because social sharing is a reality whether we like it or not, because social sharing is a powerful new form of word of mouth, and because Shoot & Share is a big step up the social scale from Shoot & Burn. Also I don't like hate wars. But this is not a TV courtroom drama, so if you're thinking of building a career in social photography, we believe the typical Shoot and Share To View More >>

Although a lot of you love our albums (us too!) we operate on the simple principle that you're running a business, and if you can't make money selling them you shouldn't buy them. But there's no doubt many photographers do struggle. Partly that's because they sell a la carte, and have persuaded themselves that their clients don't want albums. I don't buy it. A la carte is often shorthand for having a cheap headline price, and no levers you can pull to make a better sale. (I'm not saying a la carte's a bad idea, but it needs close thought). As for people not wanting albums, it was the same story To View More >>

Are you proud of your work? What's it worth? Where do you sit in the marketplace? Cheap and cheerful? In the pack? At the top? If you're not happy with where you are, what are you doing each day to change that? I believe it's very hard to achieve our goals if we don't have our heads and hearts straight, and at Queensberry we have fierce internal debates about two questions that directly affect what we do each day. The first is about our relationship with you, the photographer. You're our customer, right? Our job is to package your images, enhance their perceived value and create new sales opportunities To View More >>

No-one likes piracy, so how can you stop people stealing your digital images? There is only one sure method: Store your data on a computer in a secure office - and don't connect it to the internet. I'm not kidding. I was speaking to a commercial lawyer friend who deals with multi-million dollar litigation, and if his stuff is super-confidential, that's exactly what he does. Recently we had an irate client complain that some of her images had been pirated from Workspace, and ask how we could let that happen. She explained how it was done (I'm not going to tell you) and she was quite right. Within To View More >>

This is a long post, so I’m starting with the short story! Some people are upset about the terms of trade for our new web-based lab service, Queensberry Print. We want to clarify that, yes, Queensberry Print products are available to both professional photographers and end-consumers. Certainly, “consumer” means “everyone”, but in reality we believe these products will only be of real interest to professionals, serious amateur photographers, and people who received digital files from a professional and who really care how their photos are printed. Our existing range To View More >>