What do you want in a magazine?

[Dunk]

I enjoy reading well written in-depth technical articles and for me BJP excels in this respect particularly since it changed to the new monthly format. JE's article comparing quality digital compact cameras in the BJP March issue was brilliant and his expertise and experience with these cameras really shone through.

AP magazine's articles tend to be shorter and less technical unless written by Geoffrey Crawley - but then he is a former BJP editor. I often wonder why GC hasn't been mentioned in the New Year Honours lists for all his services and contributions to photography over so many, many years.

I do not enjoy reading 'journalese' and silly words and phrases eg 'happy snapper', 'keen amateur' and that 'orrible word ... 'gear'

Neither do I enjoy having to look at photos of scruffy looking unshaven writers (our host excepted of course) at the start of their articles .

And I do not enjoy having to read adverts in the back pages of magazines which list used camera stocks which probably do not exist - and then be advised by magazine editors that 'the advertising is nothing to do with the editorial staff'. Surely editors have a duty to their readers in this respect?

I stopped buying AP regularly when the magazine started publishing a silly tongue in cheek article about a ficticious photographer on the back page - it was so silly and annoying I vowed never to waste money buying the magazine again - at least not when that stupid monthly story was published. And I often wonder who wrote it and to which readers, if any, it was aimed at?

dunk

 

[mike-s]

I still remember, as a teenager in the 1950s, rushing home on Thursday night to get my copy of AP. At that time the magazine was full of monochrome landscapes, tasteful nudes and articles (totally lacking in condescension) with technical details often going as far as giving the paper used in the print. The regular features, including the excellent amateur column "How I make my exhibition pictures", "Conversations at the club" and Lancelot Vining's somewhat quaintly titled "Miniature camera gossip" proved more than a match for grammar-school mathematics and history homework.

I can't help feeling things have gone somewhat downhill since. Modern magazines with their various editors seeming to be trying to outdo each other in displaying their technical know-how, their deference toward professionals and the sameness of much of the imagery are moving too far into the area of processing and manipulation and too far away from the joy of taking pictures.

What do I want in a photography magazine? I want one that is about photography.