Previous |  Contents | Next Download the eBook Social media platforms encourage you to feed them constantly. Fair enough, they have the audience. But you need to feed yourself!  You’re lucky Photographers are fortunate in that their work generates rivers of desirable online content. You need to avoid giving away the Crown Jewels, and you need your clients’ permission to share, but your photography is a wonderful online resource. The ideal Things aren’t always ideal in the real world, but nevertheless… — Real friends are better than Facebook friends. To View More >>

Previous |  Contents | Next Download the eBook "Me me me! My favourite word." — Seth Godin The people paying Here’s the key thing about social photography. Those people in your viewfinder are paying your bills. All of your bills. And the images you take are more or less worthless to anyone else. What are your customers after? Why do they want their photographs taken? Actually, do they want their photographs taken? In social photography the trick is to understand that it’s not about the print, or the album, or the photography, or Photoshop, or what your peers think To View More >>

Previous |  Contents | Next Download the eBook There’s no room in this business for cynics. Ambassadors of Love Sure you love photography … but then this whole business is about love. Love and other emotional drivers — like the desire for connection, significance, family pride, and the human need to remember and be remembered. My Dad wanted a photo of my mother to fit in the breast pocket of his battle tunic in North Africa. Eighty years later I still have it. They married after the war. We have a few formal group photos. All us kids can do is try and judge what To View More >>

Previous |  Contents | Next Download the eBook "...There are those who serve the high end and those who serve the budget end of the market. And like most industries, if you don’t choose the high end, the low end will probably choose you." What I mean by " professional" When I talk about professional photographers I mean people who aim to make a living from their photography — pay the bills, buy a home, raise kids, enjoy a good life and save for retirement. We all do it differently, but you get the picture. I think people for whom it’s a side hustle — To View More >>

There are 10,000,002 ways to create a Queensberry … approximately … but who's counting?! We’re proud of our huge range of materials, colours, cover styles, page types, paper stocks, and embossing and print options. With them you can create something truly unique. But with lots of choice come lots of decisions. It can be like ordering at a fabulous restaurant with a 10-page menu, wishing you could have it all. So we thought we’d use our new sample album to demonstrate how to  simplify your design choices  and create unique "looks" that complement To View More >>

Albums are a blank canvas on which to express your personal style and taste, and we love seeing the variety that comes through the Bindery. This week's album caught our attention with its brightly coloured graffiti backgrounds and interesting design. When we asked Daniel if we could feature it, he shared with us the humorous, heartwarming story of how the couple first met – as told by them, from both sides. Talk about a meet-cute! It reminded us of something important — "It's not about the album, it's about the photography." … But dig deeper and it's To View More >>

THE DOLPHIN, THE GAZELLE, THE CHEETAH AND THE LION Originally published on The Candid Eye, what makes this post by James Yeats-Brown so compelling is that its passion comes from James' clients as much as from him. A lovely and revealing insight into the motivation behind family photography. - Ian When I arrived at Mike and Clare’s house, Mike was wielding a pen-knife in boy scout fashion and excitedly removing an old sepia photograph from a crumbling frame. The image depicted a formal group at a wedding, a family gathering posed in a static arrangement to allow To View More >>

In many labs these days the only people who look at your prints are the Dispatch team. Strange as it seems, that makes sense – it's your files they’re printing, and something has to give if you want low prices. But it doesn’t make sense at Queensberry. We critique everything we print, including Print-Ready. The difference is we see the image files with Full Colour Service (because it’s our job to colour correct them) whereas we don’t see Print-Ready work until it’s printed . But why review Print-Ready work at all? Print-Ready means you edit your images yourself, and we don’t modify To View More >>

[caption id="attachment_7050" align="alignleft" width="200" caption="Musée 10x7 dark tan; photography and page layout design by Johannes van Kan"][/caption] If you read my Musée story recently, you’ll recall it ended with a cliff-hanger … but it turned out well. You may remember we’d made an album featuring Christian [Oth's] images, but he'd never seen it. We were nervous. Well we finally did catch up, and he loved it. Then Johannes [van Kan’s] album of Virginia and Richard’s wedding won at WPPI. You can view his complete album on Youtube (no audio) or Vimeo (recommended: this is the To View More >>

It's not all bad out there you know! There are plenty of people doing better than ever, even considering the recession. So over the next few weeks we're bringing you a series of interviews with clients who are doing just great. We'll share their advice, ideas and opinions as they give us some insights into how they're successfully running their businesses. Here's the first. He's been recognised as one of the world's best photographers, serviced clients like the New York Times and Apple Computer, photographed celebrities such as Alec Baldwin, Amanda Peet, Isabella Rosselini and Donald Trump,  regularly To View More >>