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 >>

Written by: Kate Hopewell-Smith Come summertime you can’t open a newspaper or magazine without articles about getting your body ‘beach ready’. Many women are secretly terrified at the prospect of getting into swimwear publicly, because whilst very few people actually suffer from body dysmorphia (the belief that one's appearance is unusually defective) most women have body issues. The truth is that I deal with this reality on a regular basis because I shoot a lot of boudoir photography. Last week I put a few pictures on Facebook from a shoot that both I, and the lady To View More >>

Kate Hopewell-Smith believes that the more confident you are, the better photographer you'll become. But she worries about the lack of confidence in our industry, and wonders how many photographers are considering whether to carry on or not… From my experience meeting and communicating with lots of photographers there is a serious problem out there with lack of confidence, which for some can become quite debilitating. In fact I describe it as an “epidemic” –extremely prevalent, widespread. I read a lot of photography magazines but I can’t recall ever To View More >>

Written by: Clare Breheny When someone asks me what I do for a living and I tell them I’m a boudoir photographer, the usual response is, ‘Oh, women getting pictures for their husbands,’ or ‘Oh, like a bride giving it as a gift on a wedding day’. Every time I shake my head, and explain that’s it’s WAY more than that… but how do you say modestly that the time you spend with them might actually change how they live their lives? Whilst working with a bride embarking on her wedding day is very rewarding, some of my favourite clients have come to To View More >>

The first time I truly understand the power behind a brand name… I'm pulled over in Customs to be searched (I've obviously forgotten to take my nail file out of my make-up bag again – It happens far too often!) I open my bag and they start their search. The security guy is rummaging around my bag and unpacking it, naming everything as it came out, "Make up bag… novel… album…" So I stop him right there. "How do you know it's an album?" (It's in a Queensberry box.) "Oh," he said, "we see these boxes coming through all the time, we just To View More >>