Change is good

As Lemonade and Lenses has grown over the past few months, so has the time needed to keep it going.  As I have started my busy season with my photography business I realized some changes had to be made if I was going to keep L&L going.  Never in my wildest dreams did I think L&L would grow to where it is now.  All our contributors and fans are BEYOND AMAZING and supportive with everything, I mean everything.  As a lot of you know L&L has been a learning process for me, heck even my business has been a learning process for me.   Both I pretty much started right out of school with no idea what I was getting myself into.  Through all the ups and down I have learned two things.
L&L takes a LOT of time to keep up with.  This includes everything that goes into keeping it going.  E-mailing, our blog, facebook page, contests, more e-mailing, messages, the magazine, and even more e-mailing.  And I really can’t keep up with it all and run my business at the same time, which comes first, and should.  I am literally working 12 hour days just to semi keep up and that’s not fair to me or my family.  So here is the new and improved L&L which makes it easier on me so I can continue to run L&L for everyone to enjoy.

The cover contest.  Will stay the same.  I like the way I re-structured it and we will keep it that way.  If you didn’t know it was restructured then you can read about it under “cover contest”.

The magazine.  From the May issue on, the magazine will still be available in both print and digital.   The print copy will stay at 25.00 and the digital copy will be 5.00.  I know A LOT of people will be upset over this and I’m sorry.  There are costs to L&L as with everything, hosting, design, advertising, editor, etc…  That’s life.  Our issues are becoming PACKED with great information and I know for a fact photographers spend hundreds of dollars on templates, etc.  5.00 is not a lot and it will help cover the cost of L&L and keep it going.  All the photographers we feature put a lot of work into our articles which make our issues PACKED FULL of great information.  We are also restructuring the issues a little to include as much information as they can.  Please note all photographers who we feature will receive our digital copy at no cost to them.

Submissions. I want to feature AS MANY photographers as I can in each issue, and I mean as many.  All random images will be requested through fb like I have been doing.  I like it like that cause I can quickly look through images and find one that fits what we need and send e-mails out rather quickly.   It’s also easy because I don’t know where I can fit an image till I start to put the issue together.  That way I can request images as spots for them come up and feature more photographers and photographers can share their work with other at the same time.  Win-Win.  Everything else in the magazine will be articles accompanied by eye candy.  I want to make sure our issues are PACKED full of great information, not just beautiful images!  All this will be listed under submissions.  So only article submission will be accepted from now on out.

Advertising.   This will also change a little bit but will be listed to the left for those who are interested in it.

I want to also note to help put what time I have available for L&L to good use I will be spending less time on our fb page and less time answering e-mails.  I need to put my business and family first again.  I will start a Q&A page on our blog that will answer most questions and add to them if more come up.   I will also be redesigning the blog to be more simple and easier to find thing, like the issues, Q&A, etc.  So hopefully less questions will come up because things will be easier to find.

I hope all this makes L&L better for all of us.  Don’t worry change is good and in this case needed.  I’m so thrilled that a little project I started 10 months ago has grown into a place and magazine that photographers LOVE and I want nothing more then to continue to run this group and put these issues together.  These changes are so I can do this, remember I am only one person.  Please leave your thoughts below, I would love to hear them.  Or if you have any ideas that you think would make L&L better for everyone, please share too.
Thank you guys for being awesome!!
Lexi