So you have a few album designs under your belt and you are thinking "I need more!' Flips and wings are a remnant from early creative album design days, but are in fact a very cool design addition. They are easy to use and add an element of difference – provided your album maker allows them, as Queensberry does. A Flip is an extra page that folds out from the outer edge of a standard page while Wings are half pages that fold over the base page and meet in the middle. They are simple to add and can be found in the Layout tab in the Tools window. [caption id="attachment_5603" align="alignnone" To View More >>

I'm heading back to New Zealand after four gigs for MPA and CPT. When I left home Jo (my wife) gave me two things (other than the advice to stay away from danger). She gave me an iPhone so that we could stay in touch ... my phone was in a bad way ... and she gave me a small box. Now you would have thought that a caring wife would have uploaded a set of images or a small video of her and our daughter to remind me of them in their absence ... this is the beauty of technology. No she didn't. She went 10 times better. She gave me a small box of prints of our family to take away. This low fi approach To View More >>

Gotta love her: Bride by Steve and Cheryl, photography by Johannes, album by Queensberry Why do images look so good in books? I asked myself that question as I walked out of the new Aussie movie, Tomorrow when the war began in which the main character delivers a satiric line, "The book usually is better than the movie"... Take an image accompanied by a line of text in a great print ad. Or a series of images of a bride walking down the aisle in an album. Or a double page spread of a horizon in National Geographic. I reckon it's because the real beauty of the images is only discovered when they're To View More >>

Every Saturday we wake up to a new wedding ... well I wish it was every Saturday. Every time I know that I must do my best. That is what my clients expect and what I would expect also. How do you make each day your best? I started writing this thinking that there was an answer. There is, but it is personal to each photographer. Having great assistants makes the best more achievable. Do your homework, have a safety net, have the skills to stay out of danger, underpromise and always overdeliver. Be stimulated by your work and by your clients. Have fun. There was a time when I would have told people To View More >>

When a bride comes to you and says, "Can you make me look slimmer on my wedding day?" we say "Yes". We say "Yes… but we need to work on this together." Often the dream comes with an expectation. Anything that is not ideal will somehow miraculously correct itself on the day ... or at least we, as the recorders of the day, will create the truth that they, the happy couple, hoped for. So when the bride says, "I want to look thinner on my wedding day" we tell them they need to help us out. (Sometimes this is the not so subtle difference between our roles as dream keepers and miracle workers – To View More >>