Magazine mediocrity...or is it me?

Dave Wilkinson

Dave Wilkinson

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I'm pretty sure there have been other threads - in a similar vein, but please excuse my little rant, as I feel particularly peeved with this subject today!. I wonder how many other parts of the world have such a large, expensive, uninspiring, and to this grumpy old man - useless selection of ( alleged ) photo magazines?. A regular Saturday job ( ordeal! ) for me, is taking the wife to the supermarket for the weekly semi-trailer load of her must-haves, so after seeing her off around the aisles I go to the book and news section, and inevitably sift through scores of thick monthlies, with very similar titles ( always DIGITAL in it! ) very similar editorial content, and the same advertisements.
I am so sick of seeing full-page spreads of seashores, with cotton candy waves hanging around the rocks, under a lurid purple and pink sky - the likes of which I have never had the misfortune to witness!, and then being told how I can replicate these masterpieces, with the aid of - yes!, photoshop. Well none of them seem to inspire me to get the wallet out!, but I suppose a lot do, or there would not be so many of the horrible things!, so perhaps it isjust me! :(
Dave.
 
I saw a reasonable explanation once (I forget where) that photo magazines are the way they are, because it's effective at selling advertisers goods.

Think of the cotton candy waves example. To take that picture, someone will need to buy (through the magazine's classifieds of course) a tripod, a 15mm superwide lens, HDR software, Photoshop, a polarized filter, and a trip to some scenic location. Cliches don't come cheap, you know!

Whereas, a magazine that's dedicated to, say, the 50mm lens, wouldn't succeed, because that's not where the money is.
 
i think the older we get, the more we have read and experienced and the harder it is to really get our attention.
i buy few photo mags these days but when i first started the hobby i bought every one that i could find.
 
I used to read quite a few magazines... now I'm down to only keeping up with a few. Soura out of Dubai is an amazing photo mag in the vein of JPG... which I used to read but have dropped as they only publish in digital format now. I also pick up 125 Magazine... which is half photo half fashion magazine... I used to read Digital Camera Magazine out of the UK... but have found they're posting more and more "amateur" centric articles and less advanced stuff and the advertising/gear review sections are getting bigger and the content is going down.
 
I also used to read B&W regularly... I can't pin down why... but it's not been able to look interesting enough at a quick flip through at the mag shop to actually pick it up lately.
 
The UK magazines have, in the main, become very dull - made to a formula. Some "Tests" where you wonder if they're working from a spec. sheet, others where they briefly mention the camera them start wittering about photoshop, and the occasional test of a camera that's been out a year and about to be replaced.

It all boils down to money - the mags are made to appeal to mass-market, as that's what attracts the advertising revenue. Not much call for a magazine that'd get me to subscribe :)
 
back alley said:
i think the older we get, the more we have read and experienced and the harder it is to really get our attention.
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Well, for one our shallow fashion detector is better trained, for the other we are not "the market" any more.

Besides, there are real ups and downs in magazine quality. The really good ones only are profitable during the brief bursts of a high end photo boom - for most of the time, lower profile rags are much better ad platforms, and more profitable for their editors.
 
Comparing the U.K. and U.S. magazines, I still find the U.K. offerings more interesting.

I pick up Black & White regularly and still find it to be a good magazine. And I liked my weekly photography fix from Amateur Photographer.

Like Joe, I also read Pop Photo, Modern Photo, Petersen's, Camera 35 and later American Photographer regularly back in the 1970s and 1980s. These days, I occasionally pick up one of these or Shutterbug but probably not more than three times per years.

Much of my lack of interest has to do with the magazines' almost singular focus on digital photography, which I no longer find interesting.

I still have an old issue of Camera 35. The cover photo was a Phillipe Hallsman shot of Lucille Ball with an article about pocket 35mm cameras: Rollei 35, Minox 35, Olympus XA and Ricoh FF. I also kept an older issue of Pop Photo that has an article about Rodinal.
 
i have a copy of an old camera arts mag with an article by ralph steiner that i have kept around. his words still make me think a bit about what i shoot.
 
The big difference is that some magazines try to engage their readers (make them think, inspire them to take pics...) while others regard the articles as a necessary evil to keep the ads apart.

Cheers,

R.
 
I've stopped looking at camera hardware magazines, you get all that info and more on internet forums like this, but I now tend toward the arty section of the magazine store. Aperture, Cabinet, Private, Modern Painter and a number of foreign mags, not necessarily about photography, but "art" in general, that I can't remember the names off hand.

My preferences might make a number of people on this forum cringe, but it's what I like and keeps me motivated to take photos.

I'm fortunate to live across the street from the best magazine store in Canada!!!
http://www.atlanticnews.ns.ca/

Come on, they sell a magazine called "Backyard Poultry"!! How cool is that?
 
ZeissFan said:
Comparing the U.K. and U.S. magazines, I still find the U.K. offerings more interesting.

I pick up Black & White regularly and still find it to be a good magazine. And I liked my weekly photography fix from Amateur Photographer.

Like Joe, I also read Pop Photo, Modern Photo, Petersen's, Camera 35 and later American Photographer regularly back in the 1970s and 1980s. These days, I occasionally pick up one of these or Shutterbug but probably not more than three times per years.

Much of my lack of interest has to do with the magazines' almost singular focus on digital photography, which I no longer find interesting.

I still have an old issue of Camera 35. The cover photo was a Phillipe Hallsman shot of Lucille Ball with an article about pocket 35mm cameras: Rollei 35, Minox 35, Olympus XA and Ricoh FF. I also kept an older issue of Pop Photo that has an article about Rodinal.
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Conversely - 'Black & White' mag. is a big disappointment to me in recent months, I used to eagerly await each edition. Nowadays the exellent contributions - from the likes of Frances Shultz, Mike Johnson etc. etc. seem to have given way to reviews of digicams that might give a passable mono conversion!...and the regular large format stuff seems to have faded, (inevitable - I suppose !), so yes - I'm still getting my weekly AP, although I am starting to wonder about cutting down on that.
By the way, I have never seen a copy of 'Shutterbug' although I've looked long and hard, when on holiday in various parts of Europe, have I missed much?
Dave.
 
Digital Photo Pro is still OK (it's geared towards professionals, and has extensive portfolios), but the best consumer photo mag I know is Chasseur d'Images in France. I'm sure some of the Japanese mags are decent as well, but the language barrier interferes.
 
this thread is pretty redundant, are you actually surprised that these magazines are in existence? RFF serves a niche market, those magazines serve the majority of the photo market... to me, the reason they exist is more obvious than the fact bears **** in the woods

and, why read them if you're sick of them? it doesn't make sense to me, but maybe that's because i actually take the minimal effort to find photo magazines that inspire and delight me, instead of making threads on an internet forum
 
Two points:

One: If a magazine carries ads, you can bet that it exists to sell advertisers' goods. No ads, no magazine.

Two: Magazines that cater to camera users, or computer users, or auto aficionados, or any other endeavor that requires at least a modicum of technical knowledge, target their content to a particular kind of reader. Because there are always more neophytes and wannabes than experts, that's typically the crowd targeted by magazines. So, as our individual experience and expertise increases, we leave the target demographic. The magazine isn't writing for us anymore.
 
bmattock said:
www.shotsmag.com is my remaining choice. The rest have gone away for me.
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Bill - thanks, bookmarked. I'll check it out. Why does this frustrate? Because sometimes you just want to kick back in a coffee shop and read a magazine. But rarely - and I also agree/include BW magazine, do any of these pubs warrant purchasing and are good for, at best, a thumb through at the book store. Plus, single issue purchase price for some of them - 8, 10, 12 US is ridiculous for what you get. They seem so "template". Like they use MS Word "find and replace" and just plunk in a different camera into the same article. Why is it we can find interesting things to discuss - day in, day out, but the professional photo press can't?
 
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