What Happened to the Improve Photography Podcast Network?

If you were a listener and fan of the Improve Photography Podcast Network but weren’t completely caught up on the podcasts, you might have missed the BIG announcement made in the 4/26/2018 Roundtable episode.  Jim Harmer hosted the episode one last time and talked with Connor, Brent, Brian, Erica, and Jeff about a large re-branding of the network.  Below are the questions we thought you might have about the changes:

Question: Why the branding change?

Short answer: Our very good friend, Jim Harmer, is moving on from photography podcasting and has been more than generous in allowing the hosts of the other podcasts to keep running the network.  Improve Photography will no longer be directly related to or responsible for any of the podcast episodes, though Jim is invited to participate in the podcasts whenever he is available.

Long answer: After more than a decade of working very hard to build up the Improve Photography community from the ground up, Jim Harmer decided that he needed to take a very courageous step in his career. He will pivot from the Improve Photography Podcast network he loves in order to focus full time on his Income School venture that teaches people how to build communities like he did with Improve Photography.

Jim continues to own the Improve Photography website, which will continue with the same incredible writers providing daily content covering news, gear, and other photo tip posts to help photographers of all levels improve their photography.  Jim also continues to own the Improve Photography Plus subscription service that provides photography training materials and digital downloads.  Together these two incredible resources will continue to be one of the best ways people can improve their photography.

With this large pivot, the piece of the business that had to change was the Podcast Network.  He could have sold the network.  He could have shut down the network.  Instead, he chose to offer the hosts of the podcasts that were part of the network the chance to take ownership of it and continue producing the podcasts with full creative control and direction over them.

We will forever be grateful to Jim for giving us our start and believe we can not only keep the momentum of the podcast network going but accelerate the pace and quality of the content.

Question: Come on, something bigger happened right?

Nope.  Seriously, nothing bigger or more mean/nasty happened.  As you read this, we get that you are thinking that there has to be more to the story.  There must be some kind of thing that happened to make Jim kind of part ways with the hosts and the network.  This couldn’t be further from the truth.

The hosts on the Improve Photography Podcast Network, now named the Master Photography Podcast Network, are extremely grateful for the friendship and generosity of Jim Harmer.  We wish Jim nothing but success in his new venture and would love to help him anywhere we can.  We all remain good friends with Jim and expect that to last a lifetime.  Jim has a standing invitation to hop on a podcast episode whenever he feels that itch, and we are confident he will have that itch!

Question: When is this all going down?

The re-branding is going on right now (April 2018)!  It is going to take a few weeks to work through all of the technical details and we hope to be done sometime in June 2018.  We hope you will stick with us even if there are some technical challenges along the way.

Question: Do listeners have to subscribe to anything different?

Short answer: We are doing everything we know to prevent your needing to do anything to continue listening to the Improve Photography Podcast.  The podcast will soon be renamed Master Photography Podcast and get new album art reflecting that branding change but the hope is that will be all you see happen.  For the other shows, you will want to subscribe to the individual show feeds again if you aren’t already.

Long answer: Jeff is working very hard to make it so that if you are already subscribed to the Improve Photography podcast, you don’t have to do anything to continue getting every round table episode of the new Master Photography Podcast.  In fact, Jeff has spent a lot of time figuring out how to make the technical changes happen without breaking any of the subscriptions or even having your podcatcher of choice think that you need to download or listen to any episodes a second time.  Time will tell how successful he is.

The answer may not be the same for the other podcasts on the new Master Photography Podcast Network.  Based on the majority of the listener feedback, the other shows are going to be split out to their individual feeds like they were up until mid 2017.  By June 2018 we don’t plan to regularly include any episodes in the Master Photography Podcast feed other than the Roundtable episodes.

Those individual feeds are still out there, but they haven’t had any content added to them since the change in scheduling and merging all of the episodes into the Improve Photography feed.  That is going to change sometime in May or June of 2018.  If you unsubscribed to the Photo Taco, Portrait Session, Latitude, or Thoughts on Photography podcasts, then you will want to subscribe again to make sure you don’t miss any episodes.

Question: Which shows are going to the Master Photography Podcast Network?

All of the active shows from the Improve Photography Network!  Jeff will continue to host Photo Taco.  Connor and Erica will continue to host Portrait Session.  Brent is going to host Latitude solo because Brian is going to revive and host the Thoughts on Photography podcast.  The Master Photography Podcast Network team will take turns hosting with two others joining them for new episodes of the Improve Photography Roundtable podcast under the new Master Photography Roundtable name.

Question: What about the Tripod podcast?

The heart and soul of Tripod was our very good friend Nick Page.  Yes, we are all still very good friends with Nick and hope he will join us on a few episodes occasionally.  Brent is going to add a lot of landscape focused content to the Latitude podcast so that it isn’t solely focused on travel photography, but for now there are no plans to revive Tripod.  If landscape is a focus for you, be sure to subscribe to Latitude and be sure to check out Nick’s excellent The Landscape Photography Podcast.

Question: Can I listen to past episodes?

You can!  Though the way to do that is going to vary by the show for a bit.

Improve Photography Podcast (soon to be renamed Master Photography)

Jim’s fabulous Improve Photography website is not going anywhere and both the show notes and the links to previous episodes of the Improve Photography podcast will remain at https://improvephotography.com/category/roundtable/ for the foreseeable future.   Jeff did bring the show notes and links from the most recent episodes that the Master Photography team was part of to the new Master Photography podcast website (the one you are on right now) and they are searchable right here at https://masterphotographypodcast.com.

Photo Taco

The show notes and audio for Photo Taco prior to the merging of the episodes into the Improve Photography feed will be at Improve Photography as well, but Jeff worked really hard to bring all of them over to their new home at https://phototacopodcast.com.  Jeff has already put EVERY episode of Photo Taco there, each with extensive show notes that are also searchable!  He is working on creating an index of the episodes by topic so that you can find things to help you improve your photography regardless of your skill level along with a few other goodies that you are going to want to check out as they come.

Portrait Session

Connor and Erica are rebooting Portrait Session with a greater vision, purpose, and character.  They have some MAJOR plans for the show to make it something that will help photographers truly master their portrait photography.  Show notes and new episodes will show up at the new home of the show over at https://www.portraitsessionpodcast.com/.  They are in the process of migrating the previous episodes to the new home as well, so stay tuned.

Latitude

Like Connor and Erica, Brent is also making some HUGE changes to Latitude to cover not only travel but also a lot of landscape tips.  You will find everything Latitude related at http://latitudephotographypodcast.com/.  He is also working on migrating previous episodes over to the new home.

Thoughts on Photography

Thoughts on Photography has been a sleeping giant for a while, but Brian is going to wake it up very soon.  The previous episodes are all available at http://www.thoughtsonphotography.com/.

Question: Are the Facebook Groups back?

Yes!  Though we know Facebook does not meet everyone’s needs, the Facebook groups for all of the shows have been brought back and the links are below.  To keep the bots and spammers out of the groups, you have to ask to join the closed groups and answer a question that even a first time listener of the podcasts should know very easily.

Question: Are there websites for the shows?

Yes! So glad you asked.  This will be a big change from the past with each show having a website where you can find show notes, contact info, and other resources.  They are a work in progress if you visit them before the end of June 2018, but if you like the show you will definitely want to bookmark the show website:

Question: What about the Retreat?

The Retreat was called the Improve Photography Retreat the first year it was run in 2017.  We all had an amazing time at the Retreat and absolutely loved meeting and shooting with listeners for several days.  In 2018, the Retreat was run by Brian and Rachel Hanson through a new company called Create Photography Retreat. Again the hosts of the Improve Photography Network were joined by the some other incredible photographers like Eddie Tapp, Judy Host, and Ben Hartley.

Even though the Improve Photography Podcast Network is being re-branded to the Master Photography Podcast Network with the hosts controlling the direction of the shows, they plan to fully participate in the 2019 Create Photography Retreat that will be held in Las Vegas.  You can sign up for the 2019 Retreat at https://createphotographyretreat.com.  We would love to see you there!