I'm a little embarrassed to admit this but I've never read a business book. Not really. I've skirted around them … flicked through them … put them back on the shelf. Stephen on the other hand has shelves of them. He reads them and fills me in on the concepts. It's worked for many years :-) So a friend comes for the weekend and hands me this book … tells me I MUST read it: The Freaks Shall Inherit the Earth by Chris Brogan, one of Stephen’s favourites. I think it's the title that grabbed me. I’ve always felt we've bordered on the right side of being freaks. To View More >>

I've been following the latest hate war against David Jay and PASS with interest. Here's the post that started it all, and here's what it's all about. I like my commercial messages straight, so I wish David didn't come on to you like a TV evangelist, but that aside, he's not wrong about everything. So because we hate hate speech of every kind I thought I'd explain what he's right about before I get into where we part company... David is promoting what he calls Shoot & Share, which in practice means a photographer shoots an event and hosts the images on David's service, PASS, where the customers To View More >>

Have you seen the movie Hitchcock yet? Even without hobbits, elves and superheroes it's very entertaining. Alfred Hitchcock and his wife Alma were a family business, as many people reading this probably are, and it's interesting to watch the movie through that lens... 1. The movie focuses on the making of Psycho. No one else believed in the project, so they mortgaged their house to make it. Sound familiar? 2. They worked best when they worked together. He was the famous one but Alma was clearly important to his success. 3. They made Psycho come alive in the editing room by arguing about the little To View More >>

Well it's been a tough week. No plague of locusts, but nothing else came easy! But we’ve reached final and it’s an amazing feeling. Our company’s growing and we want to show our thanks. Here goes… From Day One our goal has been to build an outstanding application, which is impossible without supportive, committed beta testers. But beta testing is like jury service – who wants to get involved? It's purely voluntary, everyone benefits, and that’s why we’re so grateful. We know it’s been tough at times, but what we've done together is build cool software - thank you. Trust us – To View More >>

The Archive of Accidents that once was photography. Les Walkling describes a truth that is often forgotten in our pursuit of perfection. Editing our images to only show our best is destroying a potential archive of wedding (and family) culture. Not only do we forget but we actively discard 'the accidental archive'. In making albums we look for the best-ofs, often overlooking the incidental truths. When we are editing we discard photographs that are imperfect or that don't suit our story (this is the inevitable outcome of editing). It's a fact that vanity rules over truth, but there is something To View More >>