Making Their Mark

With the release of our 8th issue of PhotosUnboxed magazine, SHE, I thought it would be fun to share our story and show you guys a little more what I do as a co-creator. So if you haven’t been staying up to date, PhotosUnboxed is a monthly themed based magazine. Although the IG feature page has been around since 2017, Shivam and I started this project in July 2020. Our goal is to give the photographers, models, artists, authors, writers, a platform where they are free to share their stories and photos with the world. Most social media sets too many restrictions, limiting their works' exposure. We want to create a global network and give them a platform where they feel comfortable to make their presence known and where they can showcase their work without any restrictions and algorithms. Since our first release August 2nd, we’ve released a variety of themes to feature landscapes, cityscapes, portraits, written work, and graphic design.

Our team is rather small, it’s really just Shivam and I as consistent members. This means it’s a lot of work to spread between the two of us, especially as we both have other responsibilities as well. Technology hasn’t always been on our side -- Shivam’s computer often crashes as it tries to process the 100s of MB files. Ultimately things don’t always stay on schedule, and we may release later than intended. It’s also unpaid time that we put into it. At this time, we don’t have sponsors or ads. Our only source of possible income is paid submissions on Kavyar and if anyone purchases a print copy on MagCloud. MagCloud is a print on demand service, so the prices primarily depend on the size of the magazine and only a small percentage comes back to us.

For every magazine, we decide on a theme. The first few issues, we decided a week or two before the announcement. Now I try to theme ideas on the table and workshop titles months ahead of time. Ideally, we want to open submissions for the next month early enough to get ourselves back on track for schedule. Themes are influenced by the time of the year, holidays, and current trends. For example, April showers bring May flowers led to April’s theme, Puddle Jumpers -- a rain themed issue -- and a floral inspired May issue (announcement to come!) Once we have a theme, I get to work on Canva to create IG Story graphics announcing the theme and giving examples of the work we’re looking for. Canva is my favorite design platform to work on. There’s tons of free templates, photos, and elements to make your design stand out. I typically start with a multiple page IG Story template and then change colors and formatting to make it perfect. The first page will always have our logo and the issue title, while the following pages will just be call outs. Additionally, we now have the Kavyar profile to update for each theme. On the submission page, we need to have a banner, a description of the issue, and select settings that best represent the issue. The title page for the IG Stories gets altered to fit the banner dimensions, and I do a quick write up for the theme. I’m no wordsmith but I try to write enough to get the point across, sometimes throwing quotes in there. Here is April’s description:

We’ve all heard the phrase, “April showers bring May flowers,” and April’s issue is all about the rain. Whether it be raindrops on roses, dancing in the rain, or neon lights off wet pavement, the ninth issue of PhotosUnboxed magazine will feature a collection of images inspired by the weather. Work can be nature, city, or portrait related, during or following rain showers.

Once the next issue’s submissions are open, we start on outreach. The two easiest approaches for this are regularly sharing the call outs in our Stories and reaching out to creatives we already know. As I’ve been modeling for over four years now, I’ve met a lot of creatives. When I’m friends, or at least acquaintances, with someone, it’s a lot easier to ask if they’re interested in submitting. The difficult (and most tedious) part is reaching out to new creatives. To do this, I search relevant hashtags and scroll through the feed to find works that catch my eye. Then I’ll go to their feed, like a ton of photos, possibly comment on the most recent post, follow them, and shoot them a message. While I do tailor each DM individually, the general message introduces myself and the magazine and tells them why I think they would be perfect for submitting for the theme. Sometimes people respond (both positively and negatively), sometimes they don’t. For the people who are interested, I give them the submission requirements and links to either submit via email or Kavyar. To be honest, I don’t do much follow up on interested parties, unless we are really low on submissions. I just don’t have the time to chase people down for their submission.

Next in the timeline is reviewing submissions and selecting images. We really only reject submissions that either don’t fit the theme, or don’t have high enough quality images. As we have a print version available for purchase, we have additional considerations in designing the magazine, with photo resolution being a big part of that. As Shivam does the actual layout of the magazine, I leave a lot of that up to him. Once we receive the majority of our submissions, Shivam drafts us a few versions of the cover -- multiple image options, various colors and fonts for the title. We select our individual favorites and then vote from there.

In almost every issue, I also write and design my own editorial. My article will always fit in with the monthly themes. Our winter issue featured an article I wrote on winter shooting and how to style to stay warm. This issue talks about the perception of women in the industry and incorporates some of my tips on staying safe. Additionally, I love to include editorial spreads filled with quotes and stories from my followers! I run questions and polls in my Stories to get responses, so watch out for those if you want to participate! This month features a two page spread on inspirational women, picked out by you guys! AND I conducted an interview with my best friend, Sam Lenert (aka @somethinaboutsam) for this month’s issue! Seriously, this issue is dope you have to check it out.

One of my major roles for the magazine is as editor. When Shivam completes the first draft of the final product, he sends it over to me and I do edits. Edits can be simple things like moving text or images, but the most time-consuming part is editing text. As we have submissions from all over the world, some bios read easier than others. I scan through each bio to look for proper capitalization and punctuation as well as misspellings. Sometimes I have to reword sentences to make it clearer and/or more concise.

Finally comes the release date! We collect all the IG handles of contributing artists and put them into an iPhone note file. When the file is available for viewing on Issuu, we post the front page in our Stories as an announcement. The following Stories will be thanking and shouting out all of the artists involved in the issue. As IG only lets you tag 10 accounts per Story, you can imagine this can take a while. Especially because IG will stop uploading your tagged Stories, thinking it’s spam. I also love to share reactions and shoutouts from the artists who contributed. The print version is typically released a day or two after it becomes available on Issuu. In the following days, we’ll promote the issue in our Stories and also advertise that we’re looking for submissions for the next issue. And it starts all over again!

Have you checked out the magazine? Which issue is your favorite?

If you’re interested in joining our team, send me a message on IG and I’ll give you all the details!