Six weeks from idea to printed publication. A lot of hard work and late nights; building the website, an online shop, sorting through submissions, making selections, designing layouts and pages, organising articles, formatting, editing, rearranging, organising paperwork and files, working with our partners, writing my own piece, many many emails and group chats, zoom meetings and liaising with printers, sourcing packaging and setting up our Royal Mail business account. And then they were here! And it was all worth it.
One exciting Friday night (not sarcasm, I was loving it) spent packaging and labelling magazines ready to send sacks of them out into the world, this really is my baby - I think it's affected my sleep almost as much as when the twins were born too!!
I am so very proud of what my team and I have created. It's a beautiful keepsake, full of stories and images of these Quarantine months as experienced all over the world by 114 very talented photographers.
I asked my twins to hold them today so I could grab a photo. I was surprised when they proceeded to flick through (their grandparents copies - thanks for purchasing Mum and FIL, I made sure the kids were careful!) and really enjoyed the photos and asked me questions and talked about "The Virus" when they saw Glenn Dene's hospital photos.
Kalyan loved the funny section of course, showing us Sarah Ashton-Boyd's photo which he found utterly hilarious! He also liked Jillian Baudry's snail :)
Priya kept flicking for much longer, genuinely interested in everything - she got excited when she finally spotted my editor's page - "It's YOU Mummy!" :D
She also took a liking to Alice Chapman's angry daughter with her pink breakfast bowl, Kelly Brown's rainbow flowers and the belly button in Julia Pagano's bath image. Oh and of course both Ann Owen and Nikia Paden's girls' faces covered in rainbow paint were a big hit and made her giggle, two of my favourites too, I am definitely inspired to "paint" her face one day!
As well as my own two critics, we've had some amazing feedback from those who've received their pre-ordered copies which started arriving on Monday. We sold out within hours! You can see what people have to say about the magazine on our reviews page the overall impression from reviews, Instagram stories and our feedback survey is that they look and feel (and even smell) amazing and the content is stunning, I have to agree!
If you fancy owning your own copy, which as you can see is a hit with all ages and not just photographers, we are organising a second print run so you can order here and magazines will ship at the end of this month.