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Dear Dodge & Burn Readers,

This is an important plea to keep this site running, so allow me to get a bit personal…

Since 2007, Dodge & Burn has been my passion project. It started just as an experiment. Initially I thought of creating a photo diary but soon my posts went from selfies and travel pics to posts about emerging and established photographers of color.

This blog became a way for me to educate myself about the photographers that I intuitively knew existed but who were left out of the Photo 101 syllabi. When I began the photographer interviews, I realized that Dodge & Burn was an important discovery platform for unrecognized and under-appreciated talent.

It’s now 2018 and for a while now I’ve kept my struggles to sustain Dodge & Burn to myself, self funding and making structural updates on my own despite many of my friends and colleagues suggesting that I find ways to monetize this content. I’ve tried advertising but my traffic stats are not (yet) high enough to attract substantial ad dollars, plus I never wanted to compromise my content and readers to sell products or services that I wouldn’t personally use.

Two years ago I decided to “upgrade” my blogging platform from Blogger to WordPress, a daunting process given the years of content I had to migrate but I did it. Unfortunately, moving to the most popular blogging platform opened me up to hacking and other malicious activity that I’d never experienced before.

It’s been an impossible struggle to post regularly while juggling a full-time job, motherhood with 2 children, defining my career as an artist, writing for other publications, teaching, plus the many other personal and public roles I negotiate. As you’ve probably noticed, there’s been months of no posts and many times I’ve mentally agonized over whether or not to just GIVE UP.

And then I go to a photography event and people recognize me by my work or I get an email from someone who discovered a photographer whose work they love on Dodge & Burn. It’s these interactions and my unwavering curiosity for discovering photography’s “hidden figures” that keeps me inspired.

Although, at this point, maintaining Dodge & Burn has cost me a lot of personal time and money. This year I had to upgrade my hosting package to be able to handle new traffic and to also move the site to a secure server.

If you decide to donate to keep Dodge & Burn going, your money will pay for the following:

monthly hosting fees
yearly domain registration fees
social media and other productivity apps
WP plugins
professional design services
other WP site development costs
honorariums for guest bloggers
a living wage for me (?)

So please consider making a (monthly) donation to keep Dodge & Burn running! I’ve got a spreadsheet of photographers of color who I haven’t interviewed yet and every month I discover more. If you have any concerns, questions or would like to collaborate, feel free to email me at admin[at]dodgeburnphoto.com

Many Thanks,

Qiana Mestrich