The Photojunction story begins in the mid-90s, when Queensberry offered the first fully customisable albums on the wedding market.
Looking back on it, we must have been young and nuts.
We’d installed the first ever computerised mat cutter in the industry, thinking – hey, if we design a couple of hundred new mats we’ll be set for life.
No such luck. Word got out that if you pushed us hard enough we could custom-design every page in every album. A revolutionary idea … but how to do it in the real world?
If we say so ourselves the system we developed was actually very effective. And the best thing about it was that it operated completely in-house. No learning curve!
Photographers simply sketched their designs with pen and paper … faxed them to us … and we converted them into computer files.
A new millenium
We’d been doing business in Australia and New Zealand for thirty years, but in 2000 we got the urge to explore the United Kingdom and North America.
One of the first questions posed by the very first studio we visited was, “I’m shooting digitally – can I design these albums on my computer?” Unfortunately the answer was no!
An urgent review of “album planning software” wasn’t encouraging. The software available had limited functionality and was template-driven, whereas our clients were insisting on the ability to design their albums to fit the photographs, not vice versa.
The birth of Photojunction
As a result Queensberry Directors Ian and Stephen Baugh committed the company to building a studio front-end for their in-house system, and the release of Photojunction followed in 2001.
It was a matter of weeks before our customers started asking more awkward questions, like: Photojunction can send my orders to Queensberry. Why can’t it send my work to the lab as well?
The true potential
More interesting questions followed as Stephen and Ian began to understand the true potential of a program that could handle all of a wedding and portrait photographer’s main software needs:
- Organise images for viewing; display them to clients for purchase.
- Send album orders to album suppliers AND automated print files to labs.
- Produce professional quality slideshows with minimum effort.
- Increase sales with less time, less money and less stress.
- Manage the process to ensure accurate, complete orders that we could actually make!
Our development schedule began to look very long.
Opportunity or overhead? Photojunction Ltd
By this time digital wedding photography was becoming mainstream. Software “solutions” were proliferating. Digital (un-matted) albums were becoming very popular, initially at the high end. And it was becoming obvious that every album vendor needed a software solution.
“Needed it like a hole in the head,” we thought.
In fact Photojunction was starting to look more like an overhead than an opportunity. We could never tell the bean-counters, “The software’s finished”. We would always have the developers and support staff on our books.
So we decided to set up Photojunction Ltd as a separate company with its own staff (in July 2002), to throw open the software to all photographers (regardless of their suppliers) and to make the software work for as many vendors as possible. Over time we developed over two dozen sets of “album resources”.
Retro to Remix
The legend is that PJ was written by “a guy in a cupboard”, but the truth is we’d been gradually building a solid team of developers, who wrote a completely new version, dubbed PJ Remix, which was first released in 2007. It’s a tribute to the old version (PJ Retro) that a lot of die-hards were reluctant to move on, but the new software was a huge step forward.
F.R.E.E.
Initially Queensberry clients could use Photojunction for free, but others paid a subscription. We set up album resources free for vendors.
If you want to start an argument around here, you ask why it didn’t work – but it didn’t – not well enough to be a viable business opportunity.
So in late 2008 we decided to make the software free to all professional photographers, as Queensberry’s gift to the industry.
Why?
Well the software isn’t quite free. The price is your email address and permission to email you once a month. We’re proud of the software and we want to build a community around it. We love overhearing people talk about using it to design Kisses or Asukas, Finaos or Graphis … and having the chance to give you a taste for Queensberry!
But there are no other catches: if you never spend a dollar with us it’s still “free”. Don’t mention it. Our pleasure.
Besides, nothing has changed since 2001. Queensberry still needs free software for its clients. If Photojunction didn’t exist we’d have to invent it. And in the real world many of our clients use multiple vendors, especially for flushmounts and press books, and they design those books in Photojunction. We’re fine with that.
Today
Which brings the story up to date.
For the last year or so a lot of our energy has gone into transforming the software for Queensberry photographers – ironing out little problems so that you don’t design albums we can’t make in the real world;
so that Team QBY don’t have to fix or assume things, or ask for more information.
Our goal is a complete, accurate, valid order that’s ready to go straight into production.
Download and play with the Queensberry resources and see how far we’ve come!
Key team members
Danny Bay (general manager)
Danny was reared in Cleveland Ohio (American Mom, Kiwi Dad) and came to New Zealand in the last year of High School. He’s seen the light, having developed a passion for Rugby and the All Blacks, but is still puzzled by Cricket.
Danny graduated from Auckland University with a degree in statistics and computer science, gaining some interesting experiences in engineering, manufacturing and distribution along the way. He has a number of years experience in the album/lab/software industry, mainly as a developer for Photojunction and LabFTP. He’s also done time in client support, which has given him a solid grounding in the photographer’s point of view and problems.
Danny was project team leader for PJ Remix before his promotion to General Manager in 2007.
Stephen Baugh (managing director)
After university Stephen worked briefly in Queensberry. His biggest achievement was a big corporate sale that still figures in company legend. Starting in 1990 Stephen spent seven years in corporate sales with Fuji Xerox in Brisbane where he developed a pioneering CRM package to personally help him manage a large, widespread territory.
Not content in the corporate world he returned to Queensberry in 1996 after marrying Sonya and persuading her to leave the Queensland sun for Auckland’s occasional showers. With over 20 years IT experience Stephen is the reason Queensberry was a pioneer in online business, and he’s the driving force behind all our IT systems and software, all of which have been developed in-house. Stephen is a volunteer fire-fighter, and to keep up with his sister (also a Queensberry Director) is still trying to teach his cats to wave.
Ian Baugh (director)
Ian graduated with an arts degree too long ago to remember (OK, the early ’70s), then worked in secondary teaching and small boat design and construction, including a foreign aid project in the Solomon Is.
Ian developed Queensberry with his wife, Heather, who founded the company, also in the early ’70s. Ian’s focus as a Director is on business planning, marketing and the strategic development of Photojunction.