Three points! 1. Investigate and determine your clients needs, limitations, and dreams. 2. Establish design objectives. 3. Exceed your clients' expectations. We set the parameters of size, style, and content from discussions with our client prior to the wedding. Having a series of questions to answer on a sheet means you get the information you need. Album type, size, and budget are the first questions. Then how many albums and what these would do. We gauge their response to our sample albums and ask questions about what might be important. We define the style by giving them a key description and To View More >>

Forget about boxing, here are the Queensberry Rules for photographers! 1. Outstanding presentation adds enormous value to your photography. 2. Using the same albums as everyone else reduces the value of your photography. Ask anyone in the street how much a stack of prints is worth, or a disc of images, or a slideshow. Everyone's been to the mini lab, or burnt a disk, so the answer is, "Not much". What you're paying for when you hire a professional, of course, is their time, skill and artistry. Focusing on the presentation takes nothing away from that. It simply places the photography in a new To View More >>

There's a man on the side of the road selling dreams ... a guy comes up to him and says, "How much for a dream?" The Dream salesman says, "That depends, do you want a good dream, or a bad dream?" "I want the best dream I can get." "Did you know that your dreams are drawn from your own experiences?" asks the salesman. "Now I do. Maybe I could have somebody else's dream then," says the guy, hoping for a happy experience, and realising that his lacklustre life was not the material of amazing dreams. "Funny you should ask – I have a brother who sells books and lottery tickets, maybe he can help you." To View More >>

The Photojunction Start Window's new tabbed menu design gives you direct, easy to understand access to your work. From left to right... Until now the Start Window displayed events and products, which confused some people. Now the 'Recent' tab only displays recent products (ie albums, slideshows, proof sheets). If you still want to access your clients or events click on Browse tab, which looks and acts as the browse window always has... Finally, with its very own tab the Upload window is much more obvious. Near the bottom of the screen you'll see we've also added a live feed from our blog, The Junction, To View More >>

I've just been dealing with a frustrated user.  The abridged version... He designed an album in PJ then exported PSDs. He then flattened the PSDs and imported them into ALBUM_CO_X's software for ALBUM_CO_X to make. That is frustrating for me on all sorts of levels - mostly because I tried (and failed) to convince ALBUM_CO_X not to waste time and money developing their own album planning tool... but that's a different story. The album came back with a border around every page, about a quarter inch in from the edge.  Somewhere between this client and ALBUM_CO_X's software the print files that ALBUM_CO_X To View More >>

Do you know how many people are too busy to design albums? Or are under-confident about album design? Or can't figure out the PJ alignment tools (surely not)? ;) And do you know how many people have downloaded Photojunction since we made it free? I didn't think so. But that adds up to a big market ... and you already have the templates. All you need to do is add them to the Store. Just do it. Cheers, Danny (motivational expert). There you go ... #437 ... just a few gaps to fill in. Got more? To View More >>

You know that all important first impression? Well for a lot of people, the first impression they'll have of your business is your online Yellow Pages listing, and we spotted an interesting way some of our clients are making the most of theirs... Yellow Pages gives you the option to add search terms to your listing, to help describe what products or services you offer. What we noticed was that some of our clients were adding terms like 'Queensberry' or 'Queensberry Albums' to their listing. It's a simple idea but a powerful one too. Aligning yourself with a well known or reputable brand is a great To View More >>

Here’s a wedding from the ends of the earth, where your albums come from. Louise and Tom were married before 250 guests at the First Church, Dunedin New Zealand, on 24th February 2007. Louise's dress was made by Louise Anderson of Christchurch (no relation!) with fabric brought back by the bride from a shopping trip in Italy. With that exception the groom was an equal opportunity wedding planner. The wedding was photographed by New Zealand’s 2006 Wedding Photographer of the Year Jo Grams, of Moda Fotografica . It was an “exhausting” 12 hour shoot, with just one photographer, and ended To View More >>

It’s no wonder Luke and Chantal’s wedding album caught our attention. For starters, there were three albums, not one, and the first two featured the most amazing celebrations at a fabulous location. We certainly did “wish we were there”. Luke and Chantal were married in April 2007 in Mauritius, East Africa. Chantal had wanted to have her wedding at The One and Only, Mauritius since she was a little girl and spent time there with her family. The festivities lasted five days and included a welcoming cocktail hour, beach Olympics, a salsa party (featuring Emilio Estevez and his salsa dancers) To View More >>

While talking to photographers in the UK, I realised that what I really wanted to get across, was a simple but important message. The album is for the clients. Our part is to gather collateral and write a story for them. Here's the tip: Step back from the design and pause deliberately... Then start  with the idea that this album is not a showpiece for you, the photographer, but is a story for the bride and groom. We can apply our own 'signature' to the imagery, but they own the love and the history that we're writing the story about. We are the story tellers, and it's our sensitivity to them To View More >>