Least crappy general interest photo mag?

[squirrel$$$bandit]

Aperture and Lenswork are two worthy seeing every issue of. Subscribe and ENJOY!

Definitely, I occasionally buy them both, and they are great! I'm a gear nut though, and it seems to me that most photo mags fall into either the all-art category or the all-gear category (with a few newb tutorials thrown in).

It is not like this in the world of music and music recording. The two great recording mags are Sound On Sound and TapeOp, the latter being the best by far--it's about good music and how it is made. People tell you what gear they used and how they used it, as well as their techniques and artistic ideas...the two ends of the spectrum are not separate. I kind of feel this way about photography, but no magazine seems to have this attitude. Like yeah, I definitely want to look at the interesting new work, but I also want to nerd out learning how the artist did it.

Honestly, i would love to see a magazine that, when they talked about gear, they talked about old stuff instead of only new stuff. Obviously, hardly anyone is making money off of old stuff, so it gets relegated to the occasional Jason Schneider column or something...it's rather a bummer.

 

[Jason808]

You should look past the cover. This one for instance was pretty cool:


Lot's of RF stuff, too.

Maybe I was a bit too critical, but not much. I'll pick over it at B&N over some coffee...on SOME occasion, there's interesting material - the cover story about "controversy" was OK, but really nothing new. The magazine was better in years past - I still have the HCB commemorative, and was first taken with it when I read an article on Catherine Leroy, but it's much more hit and miss these days.

 

[John Robertson]

The only one that I think is halfway decent is the UK magazine Black & White Photography.QUOTE]

Still just about OK, they have had a change of editor, and I personally think it is getting more like some of the other mags 😡

 

[Ronald M]

I canceled all my view camera, camera arts, LFI, shutterbug.

S-bug finally came back with an offer I could not refuse as they always do. I play the game and miss a few issues. Bought Popular for $7. Some half decent stuff on digital darkroom sometimes. Basically it is all gone.

 

[peripatetic]

Occasionally B&W photography.

Lenswork on subscription. Two European mags for more contemporary art photography that I often buy are PhotoIcon (http://www.photoicon.com/) and HotShoe (http://www.hotshoeinternational.com/home.do).

The quality of PhotoIcon seems pretty good, though Hotshoe can be a bit hit and miss. But they do have a lot of young contemporary art photographers, and sometimes it can be really good. Even when it's bad it kinda makes you feel good about your own stuff though, so worth buying. 🙂

 

[nikon_sam]

You should look past the cover. This one for instance was pretty cool:

Lot's of RF stuff, too.

Sorry but I have to disagree with you on this issue...I have that issue in my hands right now and a quick scan of this one has left me feeling empty again just like the first time I viewed it...
Oh, and they reviewed the M8 as one of the cameras of the year...
The only reason one would look past this cover is to find the uncluttered version of the cover shot...

 

[yefeihe]

Let me offer one out of the left field: Chinese Photography. The price is steep if you subscribe from the US, and it's in Chinese, of course. It has some interesting articles, including ones about classic gears and master photographers, and nice photos. The price if you buy in China is not bad at all, about four to five dollars an issue if I remember correctly. Luckily I don't need to worry about price even in the US because the library of our university (University of Iowa) has current subscription🙂

Edit -- Just checked, UI Library has Chinese Photography in collection dating from 1974!

 

[kermaier]

I subscribe to B&W Photography magazine (from the UK), but over the past year or so they've had a couple of editorial changes, accompanied by a content strategy shift toward gear reviews and advertorials. While the rest of the content is still good, it's becoming less attractive overall -- with each successive issue, I find that I finish reading the interesting content more quickly than the last issue.

I also subscribe to LensWork, which is a great magazine in terms of being all about photography, nothing about gear, and has the best quality photo reproduction standards I've ever seen in a periodical.

I've dabbled in Aperture, but grew bored with it.

::Ari

 

[ChrisPlatt]

I miss the old Modern Photography. 🙁

Chris

 

[peterm1]

I have to scour the photo magazine section of newsagents stands to find anything that interests me. Most camera mags are just full of gear reviews and average quality amateur photos, such as pretty but uninspiring and passe photos of sunsets or whatever. (Although having said this Amateur Photographer would be the best of this bunch as it has a reasonable mix of content.The Australian Photography is on this class too. Both of these are reasonably priced too which helps - I am tired of being ripped off at the counter by excessive prices for magazines - see below.)

Most mags that deal with technique (post processing and such) either are either far too basic or devote magazine after magazine to topics that have no interest to me (and I suspect anyone) such as how to turn your photos into a pseudo paintings or other such tosh.

And most art magazines have technically perfect and well executed photos of the most awful, pretentious and dopey subjects. The recent issue of "Color" magazine is a good (i.e. bad) example - its full of "boring as bat sh*t" photos of quarries and piles of gravel and holes in the ground and falling down houses. How do some of these guys get their ideas I have to ask? This new magazine started off well with its first issue (some lovely classic photos by Saul Leiter for example) but since then has gone downhill like a go-cart on derby day. Silvershotz (devoted naturally enough to black and white photography) is probably the best mag in this category I would say and for content I prefer it to the venerable Black and White. But its price is staggering - $27.50 Australian so its not one I rush out and buy every month. It gets very careful thought before I put my card on the counter.

So its a challenge. I buy very selectively if an issue has some content that makes it worth while - even marginally worthwhile but at up to $20 a pop in Australian currency (sometimes $30 for an "art" mag) it is sometimes a long long time between drinks. In fact these prices seem to have escalated a lot in recent years. Not too many years ago the most common price was around $12 and it was rare to see one at $15 now the vast majority of imported mags are at or around the $20 and above mark. This at a time when the Australian dollar is at an all time high - ie when prices should be at an all time low.. Methinks there are some very greedy distributors out there.

 

[sepiareverb]

Any magazine that advertises a "portfolio" of images by senior pop stars leaves me flat.

I get Art On Paper (but they may be out of the print business unfortunately, among the best art magazines ever published) and have given up on all the rest.

 

[retnull]

I subscribe to Aperture -- pretentious and arty-farty, but then, so am I.
I regularly look at PDN at my school library: would be good for the commercial photographer.

 

[John Robertson]

This sadly seems to be a general malaise. I have some 1960's and 1970's National Geographic magazines, it is interesting to compare with todays magazine.
Todays has far less text, less REAL information, usually condensed into graphics of some sort.
Definitely dumbed down!!!!!
The journalist/editors seem to think we all suffer from the same short attention span as they obviously do.
They bleat on and on about how the internet is robbing them of income, the answer is "Provide some decent content Mate"!:bang::bang:

 

[MartinP]

Coincidentally, I was in the 'international' periodical store in town this evening, and noticed that they have almost three metres (I paced the distance) of two / three rows deep of photography related magazines from around the world. I am going to go back on Saturday and explore 🙂

 

[peterm1]

This sadly seems to be a general malaise. I have some 1960's and 1970's National Geographic magazines, it is interesting to compare with todays magazine.
Todays has far less text, less REAL information, usually condensed into graphics of some sort.
Definitely dumbed down!!!!!
The journalist/editors seem to think we all suffer from the same short attention span as they obviously do.
They bleat on and on about how the internet is robbing them of income, the answer is "Provide some decent content Mate"!:bang::bang:

Yes I was reflecting on this thought as I wrote my contribution below. The internet 'steals" sales so the magazines respond by "I know lets put our prices up at the newstand to cover our costs!" Yep well like thats gonna work! (Any one else see a vicious cycle in the making?)

And you are right about dumbing down I bought a batch of Popular Photo mags dating to the 1960s and it was common to have detailed tests of equipment including MTF graphs for lenses. When can you last recall seeing an MTF graph in a modern magazine? Not too often.

I think part of the issue (also being experienced with newspapers) is that as sales fall the magazines respond by cutting costs (as well as chasing more revenue from advertisers if that is possible) So the hard edged interesting written content dries up (perhaps as the more experienced journalists leave or are laid off -this is certianly the case with newspapers as more nad more content seems to by syndicated) - ie copied form other sources) the original written content gets smaller and of poorer quality while more and more is given over to advertisements and "puffery." (Although camera mags full of advertising is not new - some of those old magazines had a lot, too, but at least the advertising was interspersed with good journalism too.)

The other thing perhaps to be expected is copy cat journalism - how often do you see 10 magazines on the stand all with an almost carbon copy front page "Exclusive Review of Nikon's latest thinggummyjig." And then they are all onto the next big thing for the next issue, and the one after that and the one after that .........

I really do find it hard to justify buying regularly as much as I would like to. So I have subscribed to Australian Photography which is relaly quite OK by comparison and has a newstand price of around $6-$7. If they can sell at this price I ask - why cannot all of the $20 and $30 versions - the overseas carriage on a ship for imported magazines cannot double or treble the cost. This might be justified by air freight but clearly they are carried by surface mail as they all turn up 3 months late.

 

[monochromejrnl]

Not sure if they still publish a paper edition but www.foto8.com is a great photojournalism website... I use to buy the magazine when I lived in Vienna (2003-2004). It's euro-centric and based in London.

 

[squirrel$$$bandit]

I subscribe to Aperture -- pretentious and arty-farty, but then, so am I.

It's definitely arty-farty but not pretentious, I don't think.

I miss the old Modern Photography. 🙁

Chris

Yeah, well, it was before my time as a super-intense hobbyist photog, but I have all three of the Jason Schneider books collected from it, and they make me long for it to exist again, the way it apparently was.

 

[peterm1]

It's definitely arty-farty but not pretentious, I don't think.



Yeah, well, it was before my time as a super-intense hobbyist photog, but I have all three of the Jason Schneider books collected from it, and they make me long for it to exist again, the way it apparently was.

I am getting more out of the artsy fartsy magazines than I am the straight photogrpahy magazines, despite my comments about the sometimes cr*p choice of subjects and high prices. There are enough good photos to occasionally make me buy one in the interests of studying the technique.

 

[johnastovall]

LensWork

Plain and simple the best and most portable magazine for photography/photographers - not a "gear head" mag but, instead, a magazine that emphasizes the photograph.

Cheers,
Dave

100% correct simply the best...

 

[johnastovall]

Along with View Camera I used to get Camera Arts...later I dropped CA but still get VC...I think I started CA with their first issue...Do they still publish CA??? I have to find them somewhere in this house...:bang:


Never mind...I just checked Camera Arts website...they're still there...

CA is no longer published and after a bankruptcy in 2008 is back as a pale shadow of a great magazine.

More on CA.