A year ago today I uploaded the first episode of Around the Lens. When I started the show I started with nothing but an idea and published it as nothing more than an audio file. We didn’t have a website, a social media presence and not to many ideas for the future. Heck, the first episode didn’t even feature Zach as my sidekick, he was just another panelist on the first episode and wouldn’t take on the mantle of co-host until episode 2.
We started with only an idea, an idea I had about a year prior but wasn’t able to devote the time to execute. I had been a big fan of podcasts and had created two previous ones about photography, but still desired to do another. The previous shows, btw, were The Photo Phanatics, a news and interview show with my co-host and former panelists Mark DiOrio, and the DJMphoto PhoShow, a short-lived interview show I did to promote my personal website.
The show really started to move into full gear in October of 2015 after I’d met Zach in person. I pitched the idea to him and he liked it and agreed to be on the first episode. He got Julie Dermansky to be another panelist and we were set. What most people don’t know is that episode 1 is actually episode 2. You see I did an episode prior to episode 1 but I was kind of rusty with recording a video call with my Mac and ended up only recording my side of the conversation. Ugh. It was pretty embarrassing for me personally but since then I’ve perfected my system and now backup record every show in addition to live streaming it. The only issues I really deal with now are associated with bandwidth and audio quality which can vary greatly depending on who is on the show.
After starting the show we realised we needed a Facebook page. We started at 0 likes, like most pages do and have since grown to 113. Next we started a Twitter account. If you’ve listened to the show for awhile you might know that the handle @aroundthelens is taken and I’m forced to use @aroundlens. What irritates me most is that the person who hold @aroundthelens is doing nothing with it. What’s funny is that the website associated with @aroundthelens is this one, so whoever set up that Twitter account had big plans for our name. To date we have 181 followers. Finally, Instagram, a site I had a personal account for but never used. We created an Instagram page and worked aggressively to grow and promote it as it was the social media du jour and where everyone in our industry was going. To date we have 2851 followers.
It’s been a great run so far and I’m looking forward to what we as a network will be doing in the future. We’ve got some new shows in development and are looking to do some redesigning of the website and the brand. We hope you’ll stick with the show and continue to listen as it evolves. We also look forward to hearing feedback and seeing how we can be better.
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