According to the publishers: "The photography press is dominated by drearily similar magazines beholden to advertisers, pages of tedious equipment reviews padded with a few down-market tutorials. Yet the breakthrough sales of internationally-renowned photographer Michael Freeman's book The Photographer's Eye, which recently smashed past 450,000, showed its British publisher, Ilex Press, that what this generation of photographers really want is to develop their craft, not spend money on gizmos.
Realising that the arrival of the iPad made it possible for them to re-write the rule book and publish a magazine internationally from a tiny office in Lewes, British publisher Ilex Press – with a team of just a few people, including Freeman as Editor in Chief – set out to challenge the conglomerates, and the result is the Photographer's i Magazine, available in the App Store as a free taster for the first time on Monday 19th December.
Of course other iPad photography titles have appeared, all from the same old magazine publishers simply shifting their static print products to the screen. That's what gives Photographer's i Magazine its edge; it really is new and different. The team can and do build in explorable images and layouts as well as videos and audio, but the real difference is that good quality photography is at the core of their work, and as a result the magazine has scored some big names who don't usually share their secrets, like Abbas from world-famous agency Magnum, or New York Times-favourite Steve Simon.
Instead of being told details about lenses they can't afford, readers explore the working minds of photographers they deeply admire, and see their work in a lush new format.
The result is something that has brought in praise (and sales) from across the globe, with popular photo entrepreneur and writer Haje Jan Kamps calling it "all manner of Awesome", the Apple's Australian iTunes team singling it out as especially noteworthy, and hundreds downloading a paid-for pilot it in only a few days."
