The New Year is a great time to stop, take a look around, absorb what you've achieved, and focus on what the year ahead offers. I've just done the absorb bit. Gone back and had a look at what we've posted over the past year. I found some really great stuff I'd forgotten about! No doubt you've forgotten or missed some of these posts too so over the next few days we'll bring you our favourite posts of 2008.  There's not much of a criteria - just posts that really stood out to us. I hope they do to you too. We'll start by engaging your senses. Today we've picked a couple of really interesting interviews, To View More >>

These articles are about strategies to combat the recession. I ended my last post by posing the question on everyone's lips: what happens if my bookings drop? You'll need to have read my previous post to make sense of what follows, but to recap, based on the numbers in the graphic below, if I get 30 wedding bookings and average $5000 per job my income is $71k. If I could get 40 bookings I'd make $114k, even if my average dropped to $4600. All good, but what happens if I can only get 20 bookings? The answer is my income drops to $28k! I could still achieve my $100k income goal with just 20 weddings To View More >>

Follow the links for "the story so far" in our series on the recession... Yes, times will be tough for a while but you shouldn't assume the sky is falling. It makes no sense to sacrifice your business and market reputation to survive the short term challenge. Instead you may need to pull your horns in and find ways to prosper while others decline. A good place to start is by analysing your budget and business model, and we have a spreadsheet to help with that. Most people react to the threat of declining sales by saying, "I've gotta cut my costs". Everyone needs to work out their own figures, but To View More >>

We apologise if you've had problems following the release of v1.45. No ifs or buts. If you've been trying to make Queensberry's deadline, rest assured this problem won't stop you getting your album(s). Everyone in our support and the dev teams is focused on fixing the problems right now. Queensberry's had the usual pre-cut-off flood of orders over the last few days, including after the new release, and no more than the usual number of support calls (busier than usual of course, but normal for this time of year). In other words the new release does seem to be working for most of you – which is To View More >>

Kayla and I married last December out in the notoriously wet Waitakere Ranges, at a venue called Cassels. You can read more about the day here. The day before, bad weather was forecast. Not good. So I met up with our photographer Johannes van Kan to discuss our options. Options governed by what the weather would decide to do, and that would ultimately determine the format of album we went with. If it rained we'd focus on portrait shots around the venue, more suited to a smaller, squarer album. Sunny, and we'd head to the beach and get some nice panoramic shots and go with a wide format album To View More >>

Kathryn tweeted Ian about his blog post on selling to men, saying her studio actually did better with guys than girls. He asked her if she'd mind sharing with us - Nigel Just like Johannes, I read Ian's comments the other day about selling to men with great interest, because of late, we've noticed a real trend in our business: Grooms seem to like us more than brides do! While that's actually mildly alarming in one way (we don't want brides NOT to like us!), it's also a good thing. It means we don't need to worry about the grooms seeming bored, terrified, or otherwise un-engaged with us and what To View More >>

.. that you are selling to? I read Ian's post yesterday and thought he had some really good points, but I wanted to add to the discussion by drilling down another layer to ask, "Who is the man you are selling to?" Here are a few possibilities and I am sure you are easily able to add more (so feel free to contribute your thoughts): 1 The besot - hopelessly in love and a cinch for a big album. 2 The control freak - Needs to believe that they have choices. The choices empower them and allow them to "own the outcome". 3 The accountant - The value of the album is a number: that value equates to a certain To View More >>

Stock photography may be eating into commission opportunities for professionals, but some people are doing very well out of it, including Aussie photographer David Freund. I saw David online talking about iStockphoto's 10th birthday and asked him how this fitted with his wedding business. - Ian Ian Baugh from Queensberry recently posed a question to me about the role my stock photography takes in my wedding photography business. It’s not unusual to find that most wedding photographers also photograph other things. Commonly wedding photographers are also portrait photographers, some are landscape To View More >>

Man about town Jerry Ghionis is a great supporter of Photojunction and spreads the word through his various speaking engagements. 1) What sort of feedback do you hear about Photojunction? After many years of not doing my own album plans, I have now gone back to designing my albums again.  Since I now run a boutique studio, my involvement in the pre-production and album design process is very important.  Not being a technically minded person naturally, I downloaded the trial version of Photojunction and pretty much learned how to use it in about 10 minutes.  What I noticed immediately about it To View More >>

The absolute easiest way to get up and running with Photojunction is to jump on one of our free Intro to Photojunction webinars. So if you're a new PJ convert - there were plenty from WPPI and FOCUS - or just want a good PJ refresher, join us for our next Intro to Photojunction webinar scheduled for 10am this Wednesday (NZT). Click here to register Danny will show you how to fire up the software and start using it, walking you through everything from registering, to designing an album, to exporting and sending... And he'll also talk about the recent integration with albumexposure. We'd love you To View More >>