I Own a Queensberry Tell your friends (and clients)

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Queensberry Connects is about the photography, technology, business and relationship skills you need to run a successful wedding and portrait studio. Album marketing and album design are our primary focus but we'll cover anything it takes to succeed in this business. We hope our posts will sometimes amuse you, sometimes inspire you, but always offer something to think about. And we're all busy, so we try to keep it brief. Click here for some suggestions to get you started.

Rex is a regular coffee drinker and if ever you were to meet him you would instantly know that he was a straight up kind of guy.

Rex keeps a quiet eye on our town.

He rises early and walks the hills around Lyttelton.

Rex knows stuff. People share with him because they know that he is that straight up kind of guy. He can be trusted.

Our town also has its share of Astral travelers, bad eggs, party radicals, poets and pop stars.

There is a lot of spirit here … all under the quiet and watchful eye of Rex.

James and Co at the Lyttelton Coffee Company make the coffees that keep these spirits on form.

Between Rex and James, and the other watchful eyes, the heart and soul of our little town rises, falls, turns, twists, and beats.

The photographic community is the same. There are the watchers, the leaders, the good and the bad, and the coffee makers.

Queensberry wants to nurture a community where the poets, pop stars, Astral travelers, and all of the other photographers feel able to grow, and share with the safety of knowing they are not being judged. They want to take it further though. They want to inform, create a resource, make the best albums they can, and stimulate education through sharing.

A coffee shop does not succeed on its coffee alone, it lives in the conversations that happen there!

To call Queensberry a coffee shop would be understating their intentions … but to recognise them as a place for a conversation is heading in the right direction.

On our UK tour it was great talking to the people who came, like the Rankines. Many of them were QBY clients. I felt the potential and I hope you’ll be part of it.

Best, Johannes

He’s right. Please don’t be a stranger. Comment … link … tweet (retweet) … or how about writing something for us? – ED.

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We don’t celebrate Thanksgiving in New Zealand, but I wish we did. After all Kiwi kids have taken Halloween to heart.

What a fantastic opportunity to stop, reflect, and express gratitude to those who share in our lives.

So from the other end of the earth we want to express our gratitude to our clients, readers, suppliers and all the people round the world who own a Queensberry album.

Thank you for your support, your friendship, your love and your commitment.

Queensberry wouldn’t be what it is without you. We never forget that, and we’re truly thankful.

Cheers from everyone, Nigel

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As a photographer I’m sure the thought of losing your sight must be horrifying. So here’s a little inspiration.

Amazing teenager Ben Underwood was blind but got around almost as well as sighted people by teaching himself to “echolocate”. This video was voted one of the most inspiring on the web on Mashable.

NB: Ben sadly passed away earlier this year, but his inspirational story proves that no obstacle is insurmountable.

Cheers, Nigel

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James makes fabulous coffee. He brings in the beans, roasts them, cures the roast, grinds the roasted beans, and extracts the sacred juices.

People know that he makes the best coffee you can get.

Not many know why, or how.

Not many people understand the difference between the brew they get from the Lyttelton Coffee Company and one from Anyoldcafe. They still have their coffee here because they love the food, or the staff, or the environment.

Meanwhile in the background James is quietly fizzing over the arrival of some single source Cuban beans that will raise the coffee experience to another level.

The Coffee Hounds will raise one eyebrow and nod knowingly. The rest will possibly never know. James will be happy in the knowledge that he has once again raised the bar for himself.

Photographers do the same with their achievements. They make personal improvements and reach goals that often go unnoticed.

That is the burden we bear. The things we do that lift us above the average often go by unseen, but they do make us feel better about what we do.

Cheers
Johannes

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I had been back in New Zealand for more than a week and aware that I hadn’t written anything much.

To be honest I hadn’t had the time.

Not the ‘normal’ time that is measured in hours and minutes, but the emotional time that is measured in heart beats.

Emotional time is where the head space comes from … the place where stories are formed, the place where imagination catches fire, and the place where ideas become words.

I hadn’t had the emotional time because traveling is exhausting.

I arrived back and it took me a week to catch up on sleep, work was piled up, new demands from clients, editors and best friends surrounded me … and there was almost three weeks of family time I needed to reclaim.

So I went away again … but this time a real holiday. A real holiday to catch up on that emotional time. …. with family and friends.

Too often we allow ourselves to be robbed of our emotional time and we end up ‘coping’. I am guiltiest of that.

I know that the terminally obsessed will query where I am coming from, but it is true, so every now and them we need a pause from our extremes of activity to let our hearts and spirits catch up.

Cheers and hugs, Johannes

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Caring is an attractive quality we’re all drawn towards on some level.

We notice when people care for us, or someone else, or some thing. And it makes us feel good.

Take Gail or Natasha or Sonya here at Queensberry. They make people feel good all day because they genuinely care about the person on the other end of the phone. And trust me, people notice it.

When looking for a wedding venue, we noticed how much one venue cared even before we’d visited.

They wanted us to have the fullest experience possible when visiting their venue, so suggested we come by one Saturday morning before a wedding, and get a real sense of what’s possible.

Then when we got there, the owners cared enough about us to personally show us around. They sat down and got to know us, and what our perfect day could look like – not how much we had to spend.

We booked them then and there.

At the weekend we had another consultation with them and found it refreshing to have someone (other than family and friends) care so much about our day, they could challenge us about our ideas and suggest better ways of doing things.

Again, we left feeling loved. Like all their clients would… And that’s good for business.

From day one they didn’t tell us, but showed how much they cared – about us, about our wedding day, about our guests, and just like our photographer and jeweller, about what they did.

That’s very attractive.

Cheers, Nigel

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For most artists, the real value of their work isn’t recognized until they’re gone.

Elvis’s estate is worth far more than it was in his heyday.

The works of Da Vinci, Picasso and Van Gogh are now worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

We still enjoy Humphrey Bogart movies. They’re still making movies about Ian Fleming’s Bond character.

And of course, Michael Jackson has left a legacy of work that will continue to grow in recognition and popularity.

You’re an artist. How will your work be remembered and valued? Not just by the people you created it for, but by their descendants?

That’s something Queensberry thinks about.

Cheers, Nigel

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My take on Johannes’ dream salesman post, and Nigel on his first time…

My memories of getting married are strangely random…

All the effort that Joyce, my terrific new mother-in-law, put into the wedding breakfast.

The fact that the cake wasn’t what we ordered and had to be remade.

The guipure lace on Heather’s gown (she designed and made it, and looked terrific).

Relatives and friends slipping us cash (gratefully received because we weren’t exactly flush).

How much churches hate confetti …  and locking ourselves into the toilets at the ferry terminal to shake it (and the rice) out of our clothes.

A teacher from my old school turning up with his rugby team at our honeymoon hotel. Don’t ask.

Last but not least…

The founders of Queensberry (not yet a glimmer in Heather’s eye) have one photograph of their wedding. And no, I’m not going to show it to you!

That photograph means more to me than that photographer ever dreamed. Trust me, Johannes is right.

I was 22, she was younger. As they say, we’re so blessed.

Cheers, Ian

PS I think our bridesmaid has more photos, but she insists on proving she can still get into her dress before she shows them to us, so we don’t ask too often.

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