Last week it was NZIPP in Queenstown. This week Photography By Woolf's 50th Anniversary exhibition in Wellington. They very kindly invited Heather and me to share in the family celebration afterwards. It was his birthday so ten-year-old Noah got to choose the restaurant. It was great fun, the whole extended family get on so well ... and it got me to thinking: 1. What a challenge it is to build a long standing family business that truly serves … the family. We know it. Chances are you do too. Well done to the Woolfs. 2. So many photographers got a start at Woolfs, and many of them featured in To View More >>

Click here to watch the video on Vimeo. I remember someone in the graphic design industry (quite well known actually) posting a tweet saying, "Colour management is bullshit!" The picture that flashed through my mind was of graphic designers and brand managers hanging out at the printers, tweaking colours on the machine before they sign off on a job… And yet here we are at Queensberry, printing for very fussy photographers (often on the far side of the world), putting the prints into really pricey albums (sight unseen) and flying them at great expense to Europe, or North America, or Hong Kong. To View More >>

Click here to watch on Vimeo. I've never met Crash Taylor, but I've been looking forward to interviewing him because of this endearing habit he has of poking his head above the parapet and getting shot at. As in this post, for example, which I published because he was nice enough to call Queensberry "the Tiffany of wedding albums". I didn't mean to buy into a storm, but I did anyway – as you can see from the post comments. You can read the full brouhaha on DWF if you're keen. For the record, I think it's hard to argue with "cheap publicity" (is there any other kind?) and when I spoke to him To View More >>

Click here to watch the video on Vimeo. My father's family came from Westhoughton, only twenty miles or so from where Brett and Kristie Harkness have their studio in the North of England, so we're practically neighbours. Brett's a northerner born and bred (Newcastle), but Kristie's from Saskatchewan, where the population density is only slightly more than that of New Zealand supporters at an English rugby match. In the first of a two-part interview Kristie and Brett tell Ian how they got from working on a cruise ship to their high end studio, and: learning the business side of photography; letting To View More >>

After talking to Jessica Mills from NZ Colour Management, I thought we should bring in someone from the front lines! Philip Laing is one of our lab support specialists, and if my conversation with him paints a picture of a bunch of people obsessed with quality and delivering you the best possible album, my work is done. If you get get an insight into the many ways in which our lab service is truly unique in the album business, even better! Philip is what we call a "support detective". With a stack of experience – and huge enthusiasm for photography – he's in the front line every day ensuring To View More >>