Photography Magazines - oh dear , oh dear
Henchard
On the other hand if you want to say hi and chat about photographs please do!
PS If you get an award from me it isn't necessarily a good thing!
Photography Magazines - oh dear , oh dear
6 Jan 2009 9:39AM Views : 1152 Unique : 777Yesterday my new tripod turned up. A slightly bitter experience (I hate spending money!) as I lost my last one at a wedding I did a month or two back. Anyway in the bottom of the box was a free copy of the January edition of a UK camera magazine. I won't say which one for fear of offending any sensitive EPZ souls who might have a photo in it. Now I never buy or look at camera magazines in shops. I can't see the point of spending nearly £4 on a bunch of adverts.
In this case I thumbed through the said magazine whilst munching my breakfast toast. What a pile of c**p. From the ridiculously strange colours of the landscape on the cover to the awful photos inside that had been sent in and published. It was stunningly poor. A certain well known photo editor (I will say no more) had an 'expert's' article on how to do something in the studio 'like a pro'; my god the results were nasty to say the least.
The mystery is who buys this tripe? Who subscribes to it? Is there a group of people out there who have had a photographic quality bypass?
The more I see of this stuff masquerading as quality photography the more I love to dig out my old books and look at the work of people like Margaret-Bourke White, Ansel Adams, Weston, Eugene Smith, Salgado, Vali etc.
If you want to see stunning portraiture just take a look at Yousuf Karsh's work for example. Now a master-class from him before he died would have been worth seeing.
Rant over. Sorry.
Comments
I do know how you feel and you are right i only now buy a mag if there is something of interest.
I used buy 3 or 4 a month and really looked forward to some mags coming out and was straight down the shop to buy them, but not any more.
Stuff is freely on the net now and much better quality and advice too.
Mike
Magazine Editors and their minions now have an easy way of browsing thousands of images per week and a quick way of contacting those people. I think they are then often falsely led into the apparent popularity of the images by the number of comments etc and also beguiled by the possibility that there will be a posse ( I hate that word) of fans and chums who will go out and buy the magazine. Couple that with rise in popularity of photography since the emergence of digital and the fact that you have a price that has been forced down by the ease with which people are willing to let photo's go 'cheap' and naturally you have a de-speccing of the product.
If you look back in older magazines, the people writing articles and comment were, in the main, experienced pen smiths and photographers, who wrote with the sound backing of years of acquired and assured knowledge.
