It was five years ago today that I sat in my pajamas in the room that I spent most of my life growing up in getting the Phoblographer its start, and it was around three years ago that I also left my day job to run the site full time. With nothing but frustration for the economic situation and hiring freezes at the time, I resolved many years ago to create something that would take care of me and also take care of others. And today, the Phoblographer is one of the most popular photo blogs on the web.

Founding and running this site has been a crazy and hectic ride that I don’t regret and never have despite some dark times that we’ve been through as a company. But someone once told me that you can’t find a way out of the dark, you can only learn to fight in it. Those words helped me to persevere and ensure that the team here is always moving along smoothly.

A giant thank you needs to be given to Managing Editor Julius Motal, who has been a big influence on how the site has been shaped, its improvement, and how it functions. And today is News Writer Kevin Lee’s last day with us as he embarks on a new gig that I wrote a heck of a recommendation for. You should also know that we’re hiring.

More than anyone else though, we want to thank you: the readers. Your traffic everyday helps us to keep the site alive, our writers paid, our server bills paid, and our progression going.

But with all of this said, I’d like to draw your attention towards the future of the Phoblographer LLC.

The site is going through some major changes. We’ve worked on a redesign that was scrapped and that will be slowly implemented over the next couple of months to test the waters. But as far as content goes, we’re working on publishing a single magazine style/quality article each week in addition to the daily coverage and content that we deliver. It’s part of how we’re trying to improve the site and it’s already started. Trust us when we say that you’ll know the articles when you see them. Additionally, we’ve worked on improving spelling errors and other grammatical issues.

But that’s not all.

Within the next two months, we’re going to be introducing a weekly podcast (both video and audio) doing interviews with some of the web’s most influential photographers as well as two videos a month for either reviews or tutorials. Trust us when we say that it’s going to be awesome.

We’re also working on the creation of a second website: something a bit different than what the web has seen. But know that it will be your single hub for everything cool and trending in the photo world. We’ve brought on some incredible talent to run it and you’ll want to be amongst the first to know about it.

In no way, shape or form am I expecting 2015 to be an easy year. But it will be one that the Phoblographer will continue to evolve with.

Again, I want to thank you for letting us into your lives every day.

Sincerely,

Chris Gampat

Editor in Chief

Founder, The Phoblographer LLC