Hello all, I'm just dropping in to give you a heads up to mark this date down in your diary: Wednesday 15 August. If you're living in Auckland, New Zealand (or can make it to Auckland) you won't want to miss out on our event: a free Workspace seminar and workshop. Workspace is our cloud application which you can use for designing albums, proofing, website building and more. This seminar is your chance to learn the ins and outs of the software, how you can make the most of it and how it can benefit your business. We'll also have plenty of time for questions and if there's anything specific you'd To View More >>

Sorry, false advertising - that's as raunchy as this blog post is going to get. We don't have much in shades of grey, but our albums come in colours and fabrics of all sorts – whites and blacks, reds and golds, blues and greens, and more. But just two shades of grey. Something I love about workspace is that when you're ordering an album, everything is visual. You can see the sizes and shapes, and the images are so clear and accurate you can almost smell and feel the leather (I'm getting carried away again). So, no need for shades of grey. The whole process is black and white. Cheers, Pete A lot To View More >>

Wow, what a busy couple of weeks. The marketing team obviously thought we were getting a bit lethargic under our winter coats, so threw a special in your direction. The result is that Mid-Winter Christmas feeling going on and our departments all humming – the lab, the press people, the design team and the bindery going "gang busters". The tech support team certainly had the cobwebs blown out by all the questions from customers old and new. It's great to see so many people having a go at Workspace. Thanks for your business! I hope you'll be experiencing that Christmas feeling in a few days when To View More >>

We've had a lot of enquiries asking about the deadline for our half-price special. Thanks for making it a great success. So we're giving you a bit of leeway. The deadline falls over this weekend, so as long as we have your order by the START OF BUSINESS ON MONDAY New Zealand time we'll allow the discount. But you will need to confirm the album order and pay within two days of us getting back to you. We have been absolutely swamped with DESIGN ORDERS. These are no charge as part of the promotion if ordered through Workspace (thanks for trying the feature, people really like it!). It may take a To View More >>

The average wedding photographer works a lot harder today than they did ten to thirty years ago. The promise that digital photography would make life easier and cheaper just hasn’t eventuated. We've been keeping statistics about our albums for thirty years, and I thought sharing a few numbers might reinforce that cliche, “We’re our own worst enemies”. We’re talking averages here, and everybody's different, but this is how it looks to us. Old World Wedding Photography • Medium format camera, 120 roll film, 10 rolls x 12 exp. = 120 shots. • Typical album: 12 To View More >>

Drop everything and do this now! SHORTEST DAY, LOWEST PRICES Tomorrow is the shortest day down under. It's a little cold and wet – and between our busy seasons – so we're running a very special special to keep warm! Queensberry Press books: 50% off Queensberry Press albums: 50% off Classic Flushmount albums: 50% off Free design if you submit the order in Workspace. There's not much fine print. Your order needs to be submitted, confirmed and paid for in ten days (ie by June 30), so you need to be quick… And this can't be combined with any other special offer. Happy Mid Year Christmas from To View More >>

In the context of professional people photography here are a few things that surprise and puzzle us. How often the images are released from the studio before the sale is finalised. How the album planning/sales process can take months, sometimes years. How there's often no attempt to up-sell after the event. How the album is treated as a cost, not a marketing tool. How album planning is treated as an obligation not an opportunity. How studios go with the crowd, instead of standing out from it. None of those maximise your opportunities, and there are probably less of those to go round right now. To View More >>

I got a few pats on the back for my "check your files" post. Chris Meiklejohn, our lab manager, liked it so much that she wanted a sequel. In fact she wrote one! The funny thing was my team mates had already got me one started on a follow-up, and the things on Chris' list were pretty much the same as ours. So, drum roll… (If you like this, I wrote it. Otherwise, it's Chris!) 8 ways to better print files Would you love to have your albums arrive on your doorstep faster, hassle-free, and beautifully printed? You put a lot of work into them, so they might as well be perfect. We definitely want To View More >>

When duplicating albums in Photojunction, the new album is automatically named with the original name with "_copy1", "_copy2", etc added to the end. This can get quite confusing. If I don't touch the album for a month, I'll have no idea which copy is the right copy. I try to rename as soon as possible. I have a few suggestions that might help with your workflow, and give you an idea of the kind of confusion you can get into. 1. If you're duplicating an album to make client changes, I rename the original album as just that, "Original". 2. If you're duplicating an album to send corrected files, adding To View More >>

Many years ago I headed to an up-market department store to buy a gift. When I asked the person behind the counter to show me what I wanted, she replied, “It’s expensive you know”. Was she suggesting that I couldn’t afford it, or was she reflecting on her own economic situation? She should have known better. Her job was to show me the product, work with my enthusiasm and make the business she worked for better off. As a business person I’ve reflected on this incident often. I’m always reminded of it at trade shows when people look at our albums and say things like, “They're so beautiful, To View More >>