When Kayla and I were planning our wedding we decided... We'd rather pay someone to design and assemble our invites than do it ourselves. We'd rather pay our photographer a travel fee and have him sort out his own travel. We'd rather pay a wedding co-ordinator to run things on the day. That's us shifting the responsibility ... taking the easy route ... spending more than necessary. Whatever. But during that period, our time was worth more. Managing the process as opposed to doing it ourselves left us with plenty more time for the things we really wanted, or needed, to focus on. How valuable is To View More >>

The trouble with Seth Godin (I linked to him yesterday) is that once you start reading him it's hard to stop. Next day he's talking about how, when you're starting out ... or you're struggling ... or the economy isn't hot, it's very tempting to "take what you can get". And that has consequences. As if that's not enough, his very next post says: "If there was ever a moment to follow your passion and do work that matters, this is it. You can't say, 'but I need to make a fortune instead,' because that's not happening right now. So you might as well join the people who can say, 'I love doing this.' To View More >>

More from Mark Miller: Press books - I agree with everything you say. At Focus I had a great conversation with Danny who suggested that 'everyone' did digital, ie it was commonplace with suppliers but that Duos were the really unique albums. I agree. Aren't QBY digital albums really just a fancier, more expensive press-book? Again, that's not meant to be insulting, I'm just trying to add to the conversation. FWIW, I've stopped offering digital albums (other than mini copies) and will move to a Duo only offering for next season. No offence taken. I love our digital albums, and so do many of our To View More >>

You probably know we offer free protective coating on all Queensberry prints bound in Queensberry albums. It's a fine, almost unnoticeable coating, that helps protect the images. Prints in Duo albums are a bit more exposed than in matted books, so we’ve decided to coat all prints bound into Duo albums from now on. Free of charge, obviously. As most of our clients already ask for their prints to be coated, this change will affect only a few clients. The change will be reflected automatically in Photojunction's smart filtering system in the next release, due out soon. If you'd like more information To View More >>

Pre-wedding engagement shoots are fairly common these days - but Michelle and TJ Getz of Getzcreative go one step further and offer their clients post-wedding shoots too. These post-wedding "Creative Sessions" allow them to offer a distinctive and creative photography session without the pressures of the wedding day. For example, Michelle shot Lauren and Josh's wedding in October 2008 in South Carolina and the couple are working with Michelle to put together their Queensberry wedding album (they've nearly doubled their page count from 18 to 30 pages!). But Lauren and Josh also purchased this To View More >>

What does a photographer do when their client wants something ‘a bit different’ for their wedding day? Ask Steve and Heidi of Aim 2 Please Photography. That’s exactly what they were asked by Katherine and Steve who were married at a stunning golf course resort north of Toronto on a warm spring day. The bride and groom were married by the bride's Grandparents, who are both members of the Salvation Army, then headed off to several locations around the resort where Steve and Heidi has set specific shots up. They posed with chairs in a grassy field, under a white canopy bed and set up a shoot To View More >>

Wading through our "how-to" posts was quite a job. Trying to single out the best was just as difficult, but worth the effort. Here are my favourites. Hopefully you'll find them handy when dealing with Queensberry and Photojunction, and evaluating your own workflow... There's so much good stuff in the  Smooth Sailing series I reckon you should check them all, but here are a few: Photo Front covers (easy peasy) - If designing Photo Front covers sounds hard. It's not. Here's how to easily do it. What can delay your orders? -  Here are a few simple things that frequently delay people's orders (long To View More >>

Heading back to where they first met, Stephanie and Adam married in the hilly pastures of rural Berkshires, just west of Massachusetts. Their naturally beautiful day was captured by Danielle Zielinski . They chose a remote farm as the perfect venue and married on a grassy knoll under a cherry tree; then shared drinks on the lawn, and celebrated at their reception in the barn. Danielle’s brief was to capture the natural, unstructured beauty of the day – and it was this style that inspired the design of the album, and presentation of the photographs. A Rimu timber cover set the natural tone To View More >>

We know the feeling – you know there must be a way to do something, but you just can't figure it out.    Here's an example: there's no standard "title" aperture in PJ Remix, so how do you add a title? There are actually two ways to do it. The easier way (but maybe also easier to get wrong) is simply this: Add a blank aperture to the layout using the Add button (left image, above) Change the aperture to Customise (right image, above) Uncheck the Constrain Proportions box and enter the values directly. Easy as long as you remember the values: 112 wide by 200 high , as above. Whether you use To View More >>

Michael and Anna Costa have been touring the US over the past few months sharing their secrets at PUG conferences and events. We're their preferred album supplier so we designed an 18x12 Duo for them to take on tour. The objective was to demonstrate the value of differentiation: how great presentation can help you stand out and build your studio profile. So how did it go? We received this note from them: "I wanted to tell you the album is drop dead gorgeous. The hundreds of people that saw it absolutely loved it! It couldn't have got a better response.   "There’s just nothing quite like a Queensberry To View More >>