In my posts a couple of months back about album marketing I suggested that you need an entry-level price that doesn't scare people. That prompted Darlene to tell a good story... "If a bride has a Mercedes budget and your prices start at Ford, she won't even come look at you. I've seen that in action with some of my clients. "One guy from a rust-belt town was charging $1500-3000. He told me, 'I can't sell your albums – they're too expensive and I can't get $5000 for a wedding round here'. "I told him he'd be surprised to learn, then, that one of his competitors (20 minutes away) was using To View More >>

On 23 October, Gold Coast based couple Hayley and Greg came home to New Zealand and married at Tarureka Estate. Planning a wedding from abroad is a tough ask, but Hayley's dad acted as their local wedding planner and did an excellent job. Haran of Haran Photography shot their wedding just outside of Wellington, and says their wedding day was a simple but beautiful celebration of Greg and Hayley's love. As is their album... Here are some of the layouts. Click here to see more of Haran Photography's work. Cheers, Anna To View More >>

Meet one of Justine Ungaro's brand new client albums - a Mint green Queensberry Duo she shot and designed for clients Kristan and Steve. Justine met Steve while scouting for bands for her own wedding. He played in the band she eventually hired, and he booked her as his and Kristan's wedding photographer. Justine says, "We each had a real vested interest in the overall success of each other's weddings. It's been a pretty special relationship ever since." Kristan and Steve married on 30 May 2009 and when their album arrived, wrote to Justine to say... "We totally love this album! The photos look 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 >>

I don't like long posts, and I'm always at Ian and Nigel to keep 'em brief so I apologize. This recent post prompted Ken to comment and me to respond with this, my longest ever... Ken asked whether our industry's main challenge wasn't "crap photography" but competitors with stupid pricing, for example, "2 photographers, hi-res images and Queensberry with 60 images for £1500." Ken suggested that people like that shouldn't last in business but they keep coming back... So I presume that if in fact they're surviving, they're probably a high volume, low margin outfit - possibly with healthy post-event To View More >>

David and Sarah Henry recently blogged about receiving their first Queensberry album... "Wow! ... This company is making albums that will get handed on to the future generations as a bespoke family reference. "Our first album, a sample based on Dave and Katie's gorgeous wedding, arrived in our studio and has blown us away. It's an 18x10 Duo (a combination of digital and matted pages) with a Blueberry leather cover and ivory pages. It's absolutely beautiful. "We felt such beautiful photos warranted the impact of a large gorgeous album such as this." Click here to view more images of Dave and Katie's To View More >>

I'm looking forward to David Ziser dropping the other shoe in a couple of days. On scottkelby.com last week, in the first of two parts, he blogged about the "perfect storm" that he says has impacted wedding photography over the last few years. If you haven't read it you should. Factors David mentions include the Great Recession, the "Walmart Effect" – everything from consumers' ingrained cut-price mentality to the fact that "wedding photography has come to Walmart" (via the acquisition of Bella Photography by CPI Corporation). Plus of course the growth of digital photography (not just digital To View More >>

My clients would not dream of paying me $4000 for an empty photo album. Nor would they pay that for a book with somebody else’s photographs in it. They wouldn’t pay me that much even if I supplied them the files to print the images themselves. My clients would pay me $5000 for a book that told a story about themselves that was beautiful, personal, and emotional. The tooth fairy only pays up on the real thing. What is a sample album? Sample albums have several jobs. The main one is to set up an expectation. An expectation of quality, style, and professionalism. Our sample album(s) are what 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 >>