“Okay… what should I be offering?” The answer will depend on your clients — and your photographic genre . Each genre requires different presentation. For example, a wedding photographer, with potential sales of hundreds of images, will require completely different products from a landscape specialist offering images intended for wall display. Bear in mind too that the most appropriate printing isn't just a personal preference but will depend on the products you want to offer. For example, we recommend silver halide over inkjet for applications where To View More >>

Hello to our USA friends! A quick update to confirm that we intend to absorb the additional cost of the tariffs, to support our valued clients. We’re grateful for your business, and we want the relationship to continue long into the future!  I hesitated to provide an update earlier because the situation is still changing. In fact a 90-day pause on “reciprocal” tariffs has just been announced on all countries except China. However the situation as it affects us has not changed since the original announcement. We have never taken sides in political matters. As small business To View More >>

Previous |  Contents | Next Download the eBook Our brand isn’t a look but a promise kept — not what we say but what we do. Value Imagine if you said, “I want you to pay me what you think I’m worth.” Most people would imagine themselves out of business. We need to tell our clients what we’re worth, and live up to our rhetoric. What is the value of your work to people who don’t know you, or how much they should be paying? The value of a compelling and authentic brand is that it tells people the price of entry and helps them see it’s worth To View More >>

We absolutely love the embossing on this album — as simple contemporary font, with silver foil to really make it stand out. It just goes to show that you and your clients can have the album you really want with our vast array of personalisation options.  Affection embossing (pictured above) will shortly be available to order in Workspace.  "Keri and Ben celebrated their wedding in the fabulous surrounds of the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Although our Bride is from America, this historic university city is where Keri met the love of her life, and which she now calls home. "The couple To View More >>

The presentation box our albums come in has a long history. Developed for us in 1995 by leading designer Donna Hoyle, it combines two graphic elements: a 17th Century Italian text, and a series of leaf and heraldic devices including our own Cherub. It doesn’t even bear our name, but to us, and our customers, it’s a key part of our identity, like Tiffany’s Blue Box… but maybe not as famous! The Box even survived a total rebranding in 2008, when we couldn’t bear to part with it. It was another seven years before we refreshed the design, and even then we built on the To View More >>

This post on Cam Grove’s Instagram made our day, and we so agree that first impressions are lasting impressions. I once read an article in PDN about photographer's studios, and this one photographer was explaining how he had dropped thousands of dollars on buying this particular handle for his front door. He reasoned that the first physical contact that prospective clients had with him and his business was when they opened the door to his studio. He wanted that initial touch to immediately convey all the things intrinsic to his business; strength, substance, craftsmanship... It's a story To View More >>

There are — how many? — a million professional photographers around the world? All competing for customers who are happily uploading their own pictures to the internet by the billion every day! How do you stand out in that crowd? How do you earn a living? By being a better photographer, yes. By knowing what your clients want before they do, absolutely. And by thinking differently and acting differently. By being a price setter not a price taker. By leading the crowd, not joining it. Unfortunately the world is heading in the opposite direction. Giant labs. Huge hosting sites. Software To View More >>

I got a little reminder about walking in our customers' shoes this week. We ran a survey asking regular users about twelve Workspace functions and features, from ordering albums to hosting to shopping cart sales — how important they were to people, how often they used them in Workspace, and how easy they were to use. The thing is we (OK, I) focused on how photographers experience Workspace, but not on how it works for your customers. That’s pretty bad, but in a sense understandable … because although at Queensberry we use Workspace heavily every day (in fact the entire To View More >>

I run the Queensberry Bindery - never say "factory"! It’s a great privilege, and we do enjoy watching visitors gasp and smile at how much handwork and care goes into making a Queensberry. So this week, as we release our new packaging, I thought I'd show you how even our presentation box is a handmade product! We love handmade, and we love the companies that practice it, so we felt right at home with Glenn and the team at Artrite. They do a lot of fine art screen printing for New Zealand artists like Dick Frizzell, Stanley Palmer, Michael Smithers and the late Don Binney. You can see some To View More >>

I believe that to succeed in this “industry" we need to fully engage our heads and our hearts, and Sonya's post demonstrates how truly engaged she is. It was about the albums she’s been keeping of her two daughters since they were born, and it reminded me of another album that Heather made years ago. So here am I, hand on heart too… Twenty-one years ago we hired a professional photographer. It was our daughter Adrienne’s birthday. Stephen was coming home from Australia with his fiancée Sonya to meet the family. Heather's Mum and Dad had long passed To View More >>