I was talking to Stephen last night and he made a comment about how photographers will approach an album on the Queensberry stand at trade shows. He said that most often they will pick up the book and look at the last pages first. If what they see catches their interest they look more closely. I can think of several reasons for this behaviour. At trade shows there are many suppliers peddling their wares, It is important for photographers to be efficient in their research. The last image in an album is often a defining one and in some way summarises the quality, content and feeling of the album. To View More >>

Further to Anna's emotional cry to 'save people in photographs from random and thoughtless amputations'… I was trying to think of a way to 'stop the suffering'. It occurred to me that we could specifically shoot for the panoramic opportunity. Shoot what you might call 'the subject image' and then move slightly to get the 'rest of the scene' photograph. Use the spine as the aligned join for these images to create a panoramic effect. This has two advantages. The enlargement required is less, keeping the quality up. You plan more for the placement of your subject so that nobody has to lose an arm. To View More >>

I daren't start this blog with 'In my day ... things were different!' In my day 'We' were the difference ... we were the new generation biting at the heals of 'the old guard'. There was always going to be a new generation coming in to replace what we did. Several things happened in the wedding industry when I was starting up. People started looking for images that were less formal and more photojournalistic, and people started asking for their negatives. Enter Generation 2.0, invigorated and empowered by the digital revolution. Camera makers have made it easier for our audience to be better aligned To View More >>

I got reminded today that I haven't mentioned the follow-up to David Ziser's "perfect storm" post, which I recommended a few weeks ago. You can find Part 2 here. It's interesting reading and I hope you check it out. David's saying that, despite all the factors working against professional photography you're not doomed! There's light at the end of the tunnel. But quality and service aren't enough, so what does it take to succeed? Quite a lot really: "…product innovation, responsiveness to the client, studio-client “stickiness”, product diversity, creative marketing, full understanding of To View More >>

I'm going to drop two shoes in this post. First shoe: Some time ago Johannes wrote a post he called Crikey ("that's a lot of money for an album"). It made me feel a little fidgety. I thought, we care too much about the quality of our products and services to compromise them, and maybe that's a problem. Clients often say they love what we do, but can we do it cheaper? Sometimes we try. We go about looking at how we could adapt a product, system or idea … but we don't do cheap well. We're as proud of our work as you are of yours, and compromising feels like we're shooting for the moon with an To View More >>