"Value your time, skill, training and art" - Today we're talking to Lauren & Delwyn about the photography industry, designing albums and building your brand.  • Tell us a bit about yourselves and how you got into photography Delwyn and I are both trained Graphic Designers, Delwyn at Unitec, and myself at Waikato University. We met through a mutual workplace in 2008, and started second shooting weddings for each other. • How do you promote your business and build your brand? We work hard to create a strong 'word of mouth' brand. We also take advantage of the internet as much as we can To View More >>

It was a very successful evening on Friday for our design agency ALT Group at the New Zealand Design Institute's Best Awards, where they won a total of eighteen awards, three of them, including a Gold, for the rebranding work they did with us last year: The GOLD AWARD was for the overall rebranding and visual identity project, as expressed in our new website, marketing material, logo, product photography etc. SILVER AWARD: For the Queensberry bride book, a promotional booklet designed specifically for our clients to distribute to brides and grooms, to express the Queensberry brand story and highlight To View More >>

Last week was fantastic! Our free design and colour correction announcement generated more comments and support suite enquiries than anything else we've ever done. And it started a lot of conversations with people about how it would work in practice, and how they could use it to increase their sales. What's driving this free service is the change in our industry, with more photographers adopting the line that albums aren't worth the time and aggravation. That attitude isn't new, and we think it's always been nonsense, but the best way to challenge it is to eliminate the "time and aggravation", To View More >>

Last week I wrote about the latest David Jay hate war, and said that if a courtroom attorney asked whether I agreed with his Shoot and Share strategy - and demanded a Yes-No answer - I’d have to say, “Yes I do.” Why? Because social sharing is a reality whether we like it or not, because social sharing is a powerful new form of word of mouth, and because Shoot & Share is a big step up the social scale from Shoot & Burn. Also I don't like hate wars. But this is not a TV courtroom drama, so if you're thinking of building a career in social photography, we believe the typical Shoot and Share To View More >>

Have you noticed our finely polished "tech tips" get less Likes than the other posts? :( So I thought I'd just remind you that us tech support staff are real people too. I went to our nation's capital over the weekend as a bit of a family outing. I didn't go to look at parliament buildings. Boring, in fact I didn't even see them in the distance. I went to the Weta Cave, where Weta Workshop is based and where they made the props for Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings, Hobbit etc. I have to be honest, I nearly had a nerdgasm. Not only because of the artistic ability of the teams who do this work To View More >>