A Letter to Our Audience From the Founder

Dear readers,

It’s really odd to hear from an Editor in Chief and Publisher in the way that I’d about to speak to you. Most of us tend to address people as their community, their friends, etc. in a way that breaks off as soon as you stop spending money with them. But is that really a friend? Is that also really a member of your community? To me, there needs to be a sense of symbiotic love and a relationship of some sort — not capitalism veiled behind a paywall. To that end, know this readers: I speak to you with the most authentic self I have.

I implore you to take a few minutes please and read this letter to the end.

I have always valued our readers and I’ve always valued the vision I’ve had to make the Phoblographer a unique experience. To become more magazine-like, we took away comments a long time ago to cut down on the bloat. And our reviews are updated in the long-term with several updates to provide more insights into the gear that you’re interested in buying. On top of that, we’ve been the ones to bring to light the findings that others don’t speak of.

Just yesterday, I sat down with a photographer who will be part of our upcoming 5 Boro Foto Fest. We talked about how tough the economy and life is right now. With that said, things are indeed really crazy right now. Phoblographer has been dodging bullets constantly thrown at us by Google, AI companies, etc.

Constantly, it has started to feel like we’re churning out some of our most organic, nourishing, highest and best efforts of watering our garden only for these companies to be giving us back a pittance. I ask you, how is that fair? Truly, the farmers should get a fairer share, no?

So why am I saying this?

I’ve been working on making our subscription even better — to the point where another publication did their very best to copy our structure.

Currently, our subscribers get 11 different benefits as of August 2026. They are as follows:

• An ad-free experience
• A free mystery box for Lightroom or Capture One
• All the books in our store
• 20% discount on Capture One subscriptions
• 30% discount on Imalume Photo Theft Protection
• 20% off Herbs and Kettle Tea Company.
• 20% off your order from MPIX printing services.
• 5% off Viltrox Products via their eCommerce store.
• 10% off all film developing, printing and scanning services from Blue Moon Camera and Machine
• 15% off 7Artisans products
• 15% off a VSCO One subscription

So if you’re not a subscriber: I genuinely am saying this from my heart: please do so. Honest journalism, like what we do here at the Phoblographer, is in danger and it needs to evolve. The membership program has been the work that I’ve done over the years to make it evolve.

The program is our extra benefit to readers and subscribers to our site.

It’s only $25/year. That’s not a lot of money and our prices haven’t changed in close to a decade.

If we had 1,000 subscribers, we’d have an extra $25,000 a year.

If we had 2,000 subscribers, we’d have an extra $50,000 a year.

I’d ideally love 10,000 subscribers; but I also know what it’s like to start small even with Phoblographer turning nearly two decades old later this year.

If you’re a subscriber, thank you. But could you please encourage other photographers to subscribe too?

Thanks for reading, folks.