I’m excited to announce that we’re now able to offer yearly, rather than just monthly, memberships on our Member Page! Our readers have asked about this feature for months, and it’s finally here. To kick things off, we’re also announcing a major 72-hour sale for yearly signups.
During today’s sale, you’ll get 16% off if you choose the annual payment option, representing two months free per year. This discount is much bigger than it looks, because it’s permanent – it doesn’t just apply to this year. You will also be getting two months free every subsequent year. It’s the best sale we can offer (Patreon literally doesn’t allow a higher discount) and it’s not something we’ll be able to do very often. If you were planning to join our Member Page, now’s the time to do it. You can visit the page here to sign up.
To recap for anyone who’s unfamiliar with our Member Page, it’s a way to get exclusive articles and other Photography Life content every month. We run it on the external website Patreon and officially launched the page three months ago. So far, over 1,140 people have signed up, and we’ve already written 56 unique articles for our Members, including photo critiques, lens sharpness tests, and general tips and essays. The broad outline of what our Members receive is as follows:
Silver Members
- More articles and updates: You’ll get exclusive articles that don’t appear anywhere else. Also, you’ll be the first to know about upcoming projects, videos, reviews, and other things we’re working on at Photography Life behind the scenes.
- Early access to our lens sharpness tests: It might not be obvious from the outside, but I usually test a lens in the lab several weeks, if not months, before the review actually gets published. However, for our Silver Members, I post these sharpness results immediately after measuring them. Hopefully this beats waiting two months while I’m testing the lens in the field each time! I’ve already released 21 lens sharpness tests on our Member Page early. Most recently, this was for the Nikon Z 600mm f/4 TC VR S.
- Our “Creative Landscape Photography” eBook: Nasim and I spent years writing this 149-page book that covers the artistic side of landscape photography. It’s one of the things that I’m the most proud of making, and I think that anyone who reads it cover-to-cover will see their creative photography improve significantly. If you’re a Silver Member, you get this eBook plus all updates and new chapters that we’ll add to it in the future for free.
- Your name in our YouTube videos: All of our upcoming YouTube videos list our Silver and Gold members’ names in the video credits.
Gold Members
- All the benefits of Silver Members: Self-explanatory, but anything that we publish for Silver Members also applies for Gold Members.
- Four online workshops each year: Each year, we’re publishing four in-depth Online Workshops that cover a selected photography topic at a workshop level of detail. These are the signature products of Photography Life. The first one will be launched late May or early June and will cover the art of composition. Subsequent Online Workshops this year will cover Milky Way photography, advanced ways to improve image quality, and effective post-processing. With these Online Workshops, you’re essentially getting the most instructive parts of a $4000 in-person workshop, taught by the same photographers. (Also, if you’re part of this tier, you can download the most recent Online Workshop in case you missed it live and/or simply want to re-watch it in the future.)
- Monthly photo critique livestreams: Each month, we do a call for submissions where you can send us your photos to our team for a thoughtful live critique. We’re not in the business of tearing people down – we analyze what’s good about a photo and what you can look for next time. These have been a big hit so far, and the next one is coming up this Saturday, April 21! Personally, I find that watching photos being critiqued, whether your photos or someone else’s, is the best way to refresh your creative sensibilities as a photographer.
- Vote on which lenses we review next: Usually, I’m juggling about 4-5 upcoming lens reviews per brand at any given time. You can vote on which ones we’ll prioritize next, and you can suggest new lenses for us to review. If you’ve ever wanted Photography Life to review a particular lens as soon as possible, this is how you can make it happen.
- Early signup for in-person workshops: Our in-person workshops often sell out within 10 hours, especially our Death Valley and Colorado Fall Colors workshops. We will be announcing these workshops soon for 2024 and 2025. Gold Members will get notified 48 hours ahead of the public announcement, including a proprietary signup sheet. Our workshops are still first-come, first-served, and in theory, your fellow Gold Members could beat you to the punch – so this doesn’t guarantee you a spot, but it improves your chances substantially.
Normally these tiers are $5/month and $12/month respectively. Starting today, for 72 hours, you can select the yearly option and get 16% off (two months free each year). The discount applies to your membership permanently; it’s not a one-time thing. Every future year will also have two months free if you get it during this sale. Sign up for it today right here!
Existing Silver and Gold Members can switch to yearly, too, and get the same discount for the next 72 hours. I described the process for doing so in this post.
Thank you to all of our readers and Members for supporting Photography Life! Removing third-party ads from the website at the start of 2024 was pretty terrifying, frankly, but it’s working out thanks to your support. We will continue to put every dollar that we earn into making Photography Life the most comprehensive, accurate, and useful photography website online. I hope you look forward to the projects that are coming your way soon!
Really great news. I found Patreon to be easy to use and really like the bonus content and behind the scenes info to supplement the content here. Thanks.
You’re very welcome!
I joined yesterday, as I was waiting for the annual option. I must say that Patreon is more intrusive than I like. They seem to think that I joined Patreon rather than Photography Life. I wish that you had chosen some other platform to do this with.
Really, in what way? I support a few channels on Patreon and only ever get emails when they post new content, nothing else from Patreon itself. I actually chose them instead of any other platform because of my good experiences as a subscriber in the past.
When I used paypal to subscribe, Patreon asked me if I wanted to route my paypal through them. I also didn’t expect to have to create a username and password because I’ve been a PL subscriber forever, so obviously it is a Patreon account. I didn’t expect to have to have a Patreon account. This one is, of course, no biggie (except that I don’t want a Patreon account), but the paypal thing was a turnoff. None of it stopped me from subscribing, btw.
Ah, makes sense. Unfortunately, I don’t know of any platform that avoids those particular issues. It would have been nice to integrate paid subscriptions directly onto photographylife.com (plus then we wouldn’t need to pay Patreon a cut!) but there was no way to make it work with all the features we needed.
In any case, I think you’re through the most obtrusive part and I greatly appreciate that you subscribed to it regardless! I hope you enjoy the projects we’re working on over there.
Patreon is why I won’t sign up.
Patreon is slightly sticky, but I kept it at arm’s length by using the apple private email option for patreon, but my real email address for these discussions.
Also took the opportunity to throw some support to Christopher Frost, who provides consistent and concise lens reviews on yt.
No monetizing system is perfect, patreon seems ok. Another group of folks I respect went to locals, but that has some different tradeoffs.
ANYWAY, also signed up for an annual, after likewise just joining in the past week.
Thanks
I would like to support your work. PL provides a unique and valuable resource that is not available elsewhere. When I went to the sign-up page, however, I did not see the option for a yearly membership.
Thanks, Gary! It may look different on your browser – for me, annual payments are enabled when you click this slider:
Another possibility, depending on how your browser shows it, is that the annual options are directly underneath the regular Join buttons. You would need to click on the text that says something like “or save 16% if you pay annually.”
Hope this works!
unable to join either silver or gold
Hi Michael, I just sent you an email.
Yes :D !
I know you had been asking about it, I’m glad we could make it happen!