Horrible photo magazines, horrible photographs and why the eye and lens are king!

[eleskin]

Yesterday, I made the mistake of buying a recent copy of Shutterbug magizine believing it would relax me with a good evening read. The magazine lasted 15 minutes for me and into the trash bin. All these magazines are more less and less about "photography"
and more about technology, software, and most hidiously, "the perfect photograph". It seems to me technically, these so called "perfect" photographs are way overdone and have lost the "soul" of a real photograph. I remember when I attended graduate school for photography on New York City in the early 1990's the attitude was more on the concept of your vision. It was assumed the technical was already delt with before and would not be the focus (camera, type of film,etc). Today, I see photo classes that are nothing more than Photoshop jam sessions. More importantly, I too am using digital with my M8 and classic "Mandler" optics but I feel my images are not overdone, and still maintain the look of what I did when using film. So I am now concluding the intellectual journey of subject and discovery are number one in my book, followed by the equipment. Even here, I feel most of the stuff I see from techno wonder Japanese DSLR's is too perfect, and has a fakeness about it. On the other hand, my M8 and Noctilux f1.0 and black and white conversions are looking more classic and with soul. So who agrees that the culture of photography is becoming fake and overdone when compared to what we know about the creative mind and tools that are classic masterpeices that produce wonders in the right hands?

 

[antiquark]

I once read a lucid argument that magazines exist for advertisers. IE, the point of magazines are to sell what's in the ads.

It would be hard to sell products with articles on "the photographic vision", but easy to sell based on articles about "how to use a super-wide angle on a tripod with the latest camera bag and Whibal (tm) card!"

 

[Pherdinand]

im sure in those 1990s you mention there was some other older person complaining that it all goes down nowadays... and somewhere in the seventies it was on the right track.

 

[ZeissFan]

I think the emphasis on larger-aperture lenses and "bokeh" has resulted in too many photos looking alike.

Regarding Shutterbug, I think many of its articles seemed aimed at the working pro/freelancer and portrait and wedding photographers. I guess they know their market. Which is better than just throwing a bunch of stuff out there and seeing what sticks.

By the way, is Bob Shell still in prison?

 

[dof]

In the late 1990's I volunteered time at the sadly defunct, San Francisco-based photo metro magazine. Here was a magazine whose mission was to showcase the work of emerging and established photographers and present critical perspectives on what it means to be making and presenting images in what even then was an image saturated culture.

There were no gear reviews. No "How to shoot like [insert name of currently trendy photographer here] does." articles. No "Tips and Tricks" sidebars. In short, it was a photography magazine about photographs. (Horrors!)

Let me tell you the publisher and editor paid a deep price for these sins. Lining up advertisers for such an endeavor was like pulling teeth. Marketing pays the bills for nearly all photo magazines through advertising dollars. And the price most often and readily paid is in their "advertorial" content.

We vote with our dollars.

 

[larmarv916]

Yes , I agree...Shutterbug has gone over to the "Dark Side"! They are almost totally digital and also they have been for years, hawking "cliche" images...that have been shoot thousands of times. The Editor has this idea that "duplication" is a ture form of flattery! So Shutterbug...again twists the young or unexperienced. So what they produce is more people who are using software as the actual "image process" not the "Camera in Eye"! Advertising is the blood of all magazines. However they have totally turned away from core of the concept and subscribers that have built the magazine.

 

[Keith]

Yesterday, I made the mistake of buying a recent copy of Shutterbug magizine believing it would relax me with a good evening read. The magazine lasted 15 minutes for me and into the trash bin. All these magazines are more less and less about "photography"
and more about technology, software, and most hidiously, "the perfect photograph". It seems to me technically, these so called "perfect" photographs are way overdone and have lost the "soul" of a real photograph. I remember when I attended graduate school for photography on New York City in the early 1990's the attitude was more on the concept of your vision. It was assumed the technical was already delt with before and would not be the focus (camera, type of film,etc). Today, I see photo classes that are nothing more than Photoshop jam sessions. More importantly, I too am using digital with my M8 and classic "Mandler" optics but I feel my images are not overdone, and still maintain the look of what I did when using film. So I am now concluding the intellectual journey of subject and discovery are number one in my book, followed by the equipment. Even here, I feel most of the stuff I see from techno wonder Japanese DSLR's is too perfect, and has a fakeness about it. On the other hand, my M8 and Noctilux f1.0 and black and white conversions are looking more classic and with soul. So who agrees that the culture of photography is becoming fake and overdone when compared to what we know about the creative mind and tools that are classic masterpeices that produce wonders in the right hands?

I don't think the DSLR is the issue ... it's just as easy to mutilate an M8 or M9 file in photoshop as any 5D or D700 file.

The DSLR just happens to be the mass tool of choice and sadly as said ... advertisers keep magazines with commercial agendas alive ... not art!

 

[thomasw_]

I agree with Shane, sonofdanang, that it is more worthwhile to think about how to see and how to best transfer that way of seeing to a 2D format under different lighting situations. To paraphrase one of my heroes, Erwitt Elliott, who said something along the lines that 'photography is essentially about noticing things, for either you see or you don't see'. Indeed, thinking about ways of seeing could be useful. Tarkovosky is a good read to this end, one of many.

 

[Leigh Youdale]

Perhaps a little more positively, I have recently dropped my subscriptions to three photographic magazines that exhibit all the problems alluded to above (all advertising, all digital, all breathless latest 'whatsits') and found two that I think still hold the essence of what I find important.
They are both subscription-only magazines. Silvershotz and Lenswork. Both have web sites and would warrant a brief visit at least. Not especially cheap but you get what you pay for, I guess.

 

[nksyoon]

There are some very good European magazines but they get expensive when you add foreign shipping.

FOAM: http://www.foammagazine.nl/issues - can be a bit too arty for my taste sometimes.

Private: http://www.privatephotoreview.com/en/index.php - has been primarily traditional B&W but now has colour too.

Yvi: http://www.yvimag.com/ - only seen one issue so far, interesting

British Journal of Photography - http://www.bjp-online.com/static/in-print - recently revamped, still has some equipment reviews but also good features on pictures and photographers.

 

[peterm1]

"All these magazines are more less and less about "photography"
and more about technology, software, and most hidiously, "the perfect photograph". It seems to me technically, these so called "perfect" photographs are way overdone and have lost the "soul" of a real photograph."

I have that problem with many of these forums - including this one sometimes, but at least we have a very good "words, no words" section that often has good photographic contributions.

Too much emphasis is placed in magazines these days on equipment. Of course the camera and lens companies want to sell their kit and have to sucker us into buying the newest and greatest kit all the time or they will go broke. Its a shame that too many magazines fall for this trap too. But I suppose its their assessment of what most punters want. And of course if that is so - its what the advertisers want too.

My favourite magazines these days tend to be the ones that focus on photography rather than cameras - Black and White; Black and White Photography; Color Magazine and other visual arts journals (as someone else here has said). These magazines are interesting and provide ideas that you can learn from. Most others are repetitive and annoying unless you happen to be researching to buy a new camera or some such or want to learn the basics of Photoshop. Most of those magazines are like tabloid newspapers - pitched towards the lowest common denominator. The other thing I see a lot of is magazines that are constituted of rebadged content from other magazines. I see it a lot with "annuals". There are a couple I see on the shelves each year that when you look at them are just rehashes of articles from last year's magazines - or worse still of last year's version of the same magazine.

Having said this I do not agree that photography as a rule has become fake". I actually post process every photo that is a "keeper". I have no hang ups that I must produce a final image that is "straight from the camera" warts and all - just because thats what I used to do when I shot film. I sometimes think that this forum more than most others has a greater tendency to "luddite-ism" (fear of the new). There appear to be a quite high proportion of contributors who express concern about digital technology, simply because it is new (when one boils down what they are saying to the fundamentals.)

My favorite style of photography is in any event more towards the "fine art" style which always have substantial elements added in post processing. The only difference is that I could never do this in an analogue worked as I lacked the fillm lab (and skills) but can now do it in the digital world.

Its all about which style of photography you enjoy. And thats mine.