Amateur Photographer magazine

Amateur Photographer magazine

After fifty-plus years of exposure to its once-revered pages and over a decade of contractual quarterly expenditure I have just cancelled my subscription to Amateur Photographer. I'm no longer learning anything from it; I can get more up-to-date news and read as many camera/lens reviews as I wish on line.

The current style of the magazine, developed since the departure of Damien Demolder, with its weekly concentration on single topics such as light painting, wildlife or car portraiture, frequently leaves me practically nothing to read. The magazine sets up a trio of relatively well-known photographers most weeks to produce a brief, straightforward instructional text on a common popular theme; almost all the tips and so forth are no more than common sense. Regular two-page features on British landscape locations strike me as encouraging people to follow the herd and take the same photographs as everyone else rather than indulge in some original thinking.

I can't get inspired by the APOY competition because all the winners are now chosen by some sort of worldwide sampling, ensuring that they are increasingly 'trendy'; most of the photos are reproduced at thumbnail size and scattered confusingly and almost at random across the pages. Not attracted by the trends, I'm never likely to get to know the photographers either by frequent exposure to their work or by actually meeting them.

The long-awaited return to two letters pages from the present singleton – promised maybe six or eight weeks ago – has failed to materialise, leaving me little to read beyond the rapidly-diminishing pages of advertisements. 'There is lots more on our website', they say. The more AP puts on line, the less need we have to buy the magazine, which then loses more pages– it has a score fewer now than a year ago – and more readers, so they put more on line, cut a few more pages, and so on ad infinitum.

Meanwhile on ePHOTOzine we can follow the progress of interesting, thoughtful and frequently original photographers, encourage them and receive encouragement, enjoy their work and even meet up with them.

Of course, by stopping AP I'll have to forego my weekly dose of inspirational journalism from the controversial, entertaining, gloriously quirky and always astute Roger Hicks - but I can read far more of him on line too.