Musée 10x7 dark tan; photography and page layout design by Johannes van Kan

If you read my Musée story recently, you’ll recall it ended with a cliff-hanger … but it turned out well.

You may remember we’d made an album featuring Christian [Oth's] images, but he’d never seen it. We were nervous.

Well we finally did catch up, and he loved it.

Then Johannes [van Kan’s] album of Virginia and Richard’s wedding won at WPPI. You can view his complete album on Youtube (no audio) or Vimeo (recommended: this is the video he showed on our UK tour last September).

Thank you for the great response to our original post, and also to the crowds of people who came to admire Musée at WPPI and FOCUS. Now we’ve had your feedback we can put the final touches to product and pricing.

Meantime I can tell you a little more about the product, because it’s much more than just “another cover material” as someone said.

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Musée is French for museum, and it’s been said that turning the pages of a Queensberry album is like walking through the halls of an art museum.

We like that, especially since Heather’s goal with her design team was to set a new brand standard, based on exclusivity and museum conservation quality.

The most obvious signs of both are Musée’s pages, which have their own story.

They’re 100% cotton watercolour paper from the French Arches® mill. The exact origins of Arches are lost in time, but it’s believed to date from the year Columbus sailed to America. You can read its history on its website, as well as some of the famous names associated with it. We’ll be proud to add those of Queensberry and our clients!

But there’s something else we like about the museum metaphor. When you think of it, although a museum should have its own serenity and beauty, really it exists for the exhibits, in this case the photography.

Both the album and photography must be beautiful … but then there’s another level. Album and photography are both means to an end – telling a personal story that we want to enjoy and share forever.

If we forget that, we forget what in the end endows the work with significance and value.

But with Musée Heather also wanted a feeling of intimacy … of unfolding a precious object to get to the precious memories within.

Johannes’ words fit perfectly with her own intentions: “I want something small and jewel-like … precious and intimate like the memories it contains… I want it to have that feeling of authority that the family Bible has. I’d like it if the leather had laughter lines, like an old couch, as if it had absorbed the wisdom and memories and conversations of the people who had sat in it…”

Hence Musée’s embossed leather wrap-around cover, the French ribbon closure and the Solander box that encloses and protects it all. (By the way, if you appreciate serendipity, these boxes were first developed by Dr Daniel Charles Solander, a botanist and librarian who visited New Zealand on Captain Cook’s first voyage to the Pacific in 1792.)

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I hope I’ve painted a picture of a multi-dimensional product – beautiful imagery and design elements … storytelling … artisanship … and of course exclusivity.

Because like Queensberry itself, Musée is not for everyone.

We talk to our clients about selling “Good, Better and Best”. Musée is Queensberry’s Best. Our design team designed it with an attitude of no compromise – for people who want only the best … beautiful photography, discerning design and the best materials in a product that requires the highest level of artisanship to produce.

Cheers, Ian

PS Musée will be offered in four sizes (10×7 and 14×10, vertical and horizontal) and two cover colours (black and dark tan). Also DVD albums and 7×5 digital copies. We’ll be publishing more photography, full product details and final pricing at the end of this month. If I don’t already have your address please email me if you’d like us to notify you. For those of you already looking to buy, think mid-April.

PPS My favourite email said, “…I am sitting here almost in tears at these most beautiful stories … What I love about … Queensberry is that you totally get the passion and art involved in being a wedding photographer”. Thank you, Rachel. Those stories are all true and I’m glad so many people enjoyed reading them.

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In the middle of all the chaos and celebrations we have clients with needs.

These needs are as immediate to them as those of the tax department are to us.

We also  had a bride declare on the day of her wedding  that she had lost her groom and that there might not be a wedding …. and it rained.

Out of this chaos is the expectation, from each client, that you are there to meet their needs, and sometimes our own entitlement to a personal life is overlooked. It is overlooked by our clients and by ourselves.

We convince ourselves that the happiness of our clients is paramount, and it is, BUT at some stage we must pause, close our eyes, and revitalise.

Cheers, with my eyes briefly closed.

Johannes

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Everyone loved Johannes’ imagery and we had a constant stream to the Queensberry stand to check it out (lots of people recognised the Musée album he displayed it in).

Thanks a million to everyone who came to see us. The team caught up with a heap of old friends and made lots of new ones. We’re full of gratitude to you all and especially to the photographers whose work stars in our albums and makes them look even tastier.

I know our FOCUS team in the UK, who had a terrific show, feel just the same. Thank you all.

Cheers, Ian

PS We’re looking forward to getting home to God’s Own. And we’re quite proud of our packing.

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We need to try to find ways for our brides and grooms to commit to being photographed.

I have seen both extremes, one where the bride is expecting you to pull rabbits from hats because she paid you a lot of money to do your magic, and the other extreme where she almost dresses as a rabbit to make your life easier, and the magic more real.

One bride came to me telling me I had the job (of shooting her wedding) if I could make her look skinnier in the photographs … I said to her we could but I needed her help. I needed her to at least think skinny and do some work to get there. I needed her to have the right dress (and dressmaker). I said we would use the right lighting and would get her standing in complimentary ways. At no time did I mention The Skinny Filter in Photoshop.

This is all about investing in the outcome.

Many people do this already …

The real magic only happens when everybody (including the magician) believes. Walt Disney was particularly good at this.

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About twelve months ago Jonas Peterson left his high profile, high paying position as a leading advertising copywriter to become a full-time photographer…

In his first year on the block he shot 42 weddings and jumped to number one in Google rankings for ‘Brisbane wedding photographer’ (actually he did that in two months).

He’s booked 15 destination weddings so far this year and describes his business as ‘wedding photography with a touch of awesome’.

He’s built a loyal following on his blog (over 2000 hits a day), has over 1450 followers on Twitter and a similar number of fans on his Facebook page. All reflect his engaging style and are well worth a look.

Johannes van Kan talks to Jonas about how he got up to speed in just 12 months, how he uses social media to get his message out there and his workflow and approach to albums.

Click here to listen to Johannes’ interview with Jonas Peterson (40 mins).

Cheers, Nigel

PS Skype dropped out in the middle of the interview, so you might notice a little awkwardness where I’ve stitched together the two halves of Jonas’s response to one of Johannes’ questions.

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In fact it begins with three stories, and the real magic is how they weave together…

The first begins several years ago with a traveller on a bus in Spain, who strikes up a conversation with the woman sitting next to him. They like each other enough to introduce themselves.

He’s a wedding photographer from the far side of the world, in Spain on a scholarship.

She’s a paper conservator living in England, home to visit her family in Barcelona – and as it turns out, later, in love.

The photographer and the conservator like each other enough to swap email addresses … and that’s it.

Until one day five years later the photographer gets an email.

Virginia is to marry Richard, her Irish lover, in the Salo de Cent in Barcelona, and she wants him to photograph the event.

Every fibre in the photographer’s being wants to do this. The serendipity, the connection, Spain, the opportunity to shoot in a magnificent space.

He and his wife Jo travel to Barcelona, shoot the wedding, assemble a magical collection of images … and the photographer wonders what to do with them.

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But Johannes is not just an artist and storyteller, he’s also competitive. How to create something original to do justice to the Barcelona images is one thing, but another challenge is gnawing at him…

For the last two years he’s won the New Zealand Wedding Album of the Year award, and he wants to win again. He knows how good his colleagues are … he knows he’ll use Virginia and Richard’s Barcelona images … but … is that enough?

He picks up the phone and calls a friend.

Can you make me a very special album, he asks her?

I want something small and jewel-like, he says. I want it to feel precious and intimate, like the memories it contains. He cups his hands as he speaks … not that she can see … like those photos of the father holding his newborn.

I want it to be of leather. I want it to have that feeling of authority that the family Bible has.

I’d like it if the leather had laughter lines, like an old couch, as if it had absorbed the wisdom and memories and conversations of the people who had sat in it…

Is that possible?

§

Conversations like this can be very awkward because they can so easily lead nowhere…

You’re not a sole craftsman, you’re creative director … so many demands. How much can you give to other people’s dreams? Do you really understand what’s in the other person’s head? Will they like what evolves in yours?

Can you even get the materials to realise their ideas?

But in this case Heather knew exactly what she would do.

She was already dreaming of a new album.

Strange perhaps that people can dream of albums, but really, no stranger than people who dream of wedding photography.

For years Queensberry had been building a system for designing beautiful custom albums, but now she wanted to do something that took her to a new level, something that took her back to her artisan roots.

She and her design team were already at work on a concept.

In fact Johannes’ album sounded like their album … and how fortunate to have his photographs for it.

She even had the brown vegetable tanned leathers in the studio. She’d bought them for her dream, but she knew they would age to fulfil his.

With a feeling of certainty she made the book and sent it to him just in time for the judging.

I saw it just before it shipped, and I was much less certain than Heather. Not because of the book – I thought the photography and the setting and the binding were beautiful – but because I did not know whether this was Johannes’ dream…

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But he loved it. He won.

He photographed the album, unfolding the elements to get to those intimate pages and the memories they will keep for generations. Then he made a slide show and set it to a song I thought was perfect.

We showed it to a few audiences, who loved it, and the tactile experience of the actual album, and I could tell Heather it was a success.

Virginia loved it too. Of course she did. She loved the images, but art and paper are her profession, as they are Richard’s – they’re both conservators, he at the Victoria and Albert, she at the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich – and she adored how they were presented.

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The postscript is another story, and as I write I don’t know how it ends…

Gino, one of our account managers, was talking to a Manhattan photographer whose work we’d featured on our new website.

You know my clients, he said. They want the very best, and they can afford it. I need something very special for them. What can you do?

When Gino called Heather about the conversation she was in the process of designing a second album, black this time. She wanted to fill it with beautiful black and white photography and she felt she’d found the perfect images … In fact she had the Manhattan photographer’s images on her screen when Gino called.

It was such serendipity that she called me in disbelief.

She doesn’t know whether Christian will like the album yet because he hasn’t seen it … but we think it looks stunning, and we hope he will.

Best wishes, Ian

You can see Queensberry’s Musée albums pre-release at WPPI and FOCUS.

Please email me if you’d like us to advise when we release Musée on line.

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Plenty to think about – do read it!

“When everyone has a camera, and everyone thinks they are a photographic artist, it’s clear that access to the device is not a scarce resource. If that’s all you’ve got, I’m not going to pay you. The art isn’t in the taking of the picture.”

Cheers, Ian

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We love this opportunity to visit the States and the UK, meet old friends and make new ones … and we hope you’ll be among them.

Queensberry is for people who believe that the way to succeed is to stand out from the crowd, not join it, and this year we have two new projects to talk to you about:

1. As you may know Apple chose Queensberry as one of “the world’s finest bookmakers” to introduce their album design and ordering service in Aperture 3. Far from us to say why they chose us, so come along and make up your own mind!

2. We’re announcing a brand new album. This is all we can say about it: It’s beautiful … it’s about standing out from the crowd … and photographers who’ve seen it so far absolutely love it.

Here’s the details:

WPPI: 8-10 March 2010

MGM Grand, Las Vegas @ Stand # 1235

FOCUS: 7-10 March 2010

NEC, Birmingham @ Stand # B19 & B21

WPPI and FOCUS are the best possible time to check us out and sign up. Buy at the shows and you’ll pay 20% less for your Starter Kit. Plus, one person each day will win their Starter Kit free!

See you there!

Cheers, Nigel

PS if you’re coming to WPPI here’s a complimentary Tradeshow pass. Just click the image to save or print, and take it along to WPPI registration, or register online at www.wppionline.com

 

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Congratulations Johannes

We’re coming to SWPP

Queensberry Album Plug-in for Aperture 3

]]> http://www.queensberry.com/connects/2010/03/wppi-2010/feed/ 0 http://www.queensberry.com/connects/2010/03/wppi-2010/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/queensberryconnection/~3/-ZH8Db0PcSo/ http://www.queensberry.com/connects/2010/02/running/#comments Thu, 25 Feb 2010 03:35:38 +0000 Nigel Hicks http://www.queensberry.com/connects/?p=6923 You may have noticed our email has been down for the past couple of days.

We’re glad to report that the problem has apparently now been fixed (a damaged cable) and we’re all back online. Fingers crossed!

Emails sent to us while the server was down may be a little delayed in getting to our inboxes but we’ll respond as soon as we can.

Our apologies again for the inconvenience. It’s a relief to be back on line.

 

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Email down

WPPI and FOCUS 2010

Queensberry announces Musee

]]> http://www.queensberry.com/connects/2010/02/running/feed/ 0 http://www.queensberry.com/connects/2010/02/running/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/queensberryconnection/~3/yuZjRrpAmvY/ http://www.queensberry.com/connects/2010/02/email-2/#comments Tue, 23 Feb 2010 08:53:44 +0000 Ian Baugh http://www.queensberry.com/connects/?p=6916 We regret to advise that due to a line break outside our control our secure websites and email are down.

That means you can’t access your Queensberry account, Queensberry’s and Photojunction’s registration systems aren’t working and we cannot access your email. Your email should have been received but we can’t get to it: to avoid confusion please don’t resend it unless you don’t hear from us within normal service times once we’re back online.

It could be 24 hours before we’re back up.

Our apologies for the inconvenience. When we get more news we’ll post it here.

 

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Email back up and running

Queensberry Album Plug-in for Aperture 3

Wish you were here

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