The British Journal of Photography (BJP). The worlds oldest photography journal. Published weekly and subscription is £85 annually.
http://www.bjp-online.com
with subscription you get printed version delivered to your home weekly and full access to online version as well as a vast list of previously published articles.
don't know if they deliver to US or not. Maybe you can get international subscription for online only.
there is a free 2 week online subscription.
We cancelled pretty much everything because there didn't seem to be enough time to read them all. Kept Wired and National Geographic, which never fail to disappoint.
I actually read Popular Photography, and when I get to France, I usually pick a copy of Chasseur d'Images (which occupies the same niche, but is so much better). True, PP covers featuring the latest DSLR get boring, but I always seem to find something of interest for $1. For instance, they featured An My Le a few months before VC did, there was an article by Harold Feinstein where he explained how "one hundred flowers" was "shot", etc... In addition, if the manufacturers want you to hear about something new, that's the place.
Last edited by QT Luong; 18-Jul-2006 at 00:36.
None
Besides the obvious candidates...
Well let me add my 0,02 euro from a French reader of this forum.
Besides the obvious candidates. Magazines that few of you might know ;-)
Photo-related magazines :
From time to time I buy "le Photographe" wich is published by the same group as "Réponses Photo". Although "le Photographe" is supposed to be targeted to professional photographers, it is interesting for an amateur to see what is going on in the business. The saga of the digital revolution among professionals is in itself fascinating.
At our local public library, the librarians have put side-to-side on the same rack an assortment of "regular" photo-magazines, just close to the famous Italian arts magazine Franco Maria Ricci (FMR). FMR is a really luxury magazine (outch ! the price !!) where all pictures were probably taken with LF cameras before the digital era, but image quality did not come down since. No need to say that when I go the the library, I now prefer to browse through FMR and I let "regular" photo magazines aside ;-)
I occasionnaly read the German magazine Schwarzweiss. This magazine like Lenswork is devoted to B&W only ; however it does cover all aspects of B&W fine work, all formats, and does include some optics/camera/darkroom/digital/technical articles. There is almost no advertising except cover pages.
Another German magazine I buy at the newstand when travelling by train to Germany is Fotoforum. One of the last magazines supporting traditional projection of fine color slides, something apparently still alive and (hopefully) well in Germany.
The only reason I subscribe to Shutterbug is to keep up to date on the new digital stuff,
The only reason why I stopped subscribing to Shutterbug was that I had absolutely no interest to keep up to date with the new digital stuff... at least in paper form. Eventually, I found definitely irrelevant and environmentallly-unfriendly to pay for 75+% of useless paper featuring ads that I could comfortably read on the Internet with much bigger fonts ;-). When the magazine arrived in France by economy surface mail, the information about all the digital stuff was already obsolete ;-);-)
Non-photo, but magazines which would not exist without photos :
I subscribed to the French edition of the National Geographic for a while when it was introduced, thinking that it would be easier for me to read the French text; I had been subscribing to the English edition for several years, but eventually I lost interest in the magazine and unsubscribed; I acknowledge however a remarkable effort to publish a substantial amount of original articles for the French edition.
I subscribe to the week-end edition of "le Monde" which comes with a magazine "Le Monde 2". In the week-end edition of the newspaper there is a selection of original English articles from the New York Times. Interesting to read what "they" say over there ;-) For half a century "le Monde" had a strange policy : images ware banned. Eventually images were introduced but only in the inside pages; "they" surrendered with one photo on page #1 plus "Le Monde 2" which is an all-photography magazine with an emphasis on photographic work, exhibitions, porfolios... and many portfolios were devoted to Large Format Photographers, something very surprising in the French Press, probably significant of a renewed interest in LF for fine art and creative work in France, in a photo-journalistic world converted 100% digital after being 100% 35mm-on-film for decades.
Now off-topic : non-photo magazines but where images are extremely important :
Besides this I subscribe to a magazine of fine wood-working, "le Bouvet" which in spirit is equivalent to this forum : techniques + tricks + fine art. It is illustrated with many photos. Digital camera are really a blessing since a specialised magazine with a modest number of copies can now feature excellent pictures at moderate editing costs.
I subscribe also to the French Alpine Club Magazine "la Montagne" which features nice photographs as well although I doubt that any LF pictures were ever featured in the magazine except repro of vintage pictures. In the same spirit I wish to recommend "l'Alpe" which is a superb fine-art magazine dedicated to the the life, history, culture, geography, wildlife, etc.. of the European Alpine community. Photographs are really top-class. It is published in two editions, French and Italian with a summary in English and German.
100% non-photographic but of interest to those who love being in the outdoors: I also subscribe to a magazine dedicated to wildlife: "La Hulotte". The magazine is entirely illustrated by fine hand-made drawings. We must acknowledge that for natural sciences and wildlife, hand-made drawings still have something special that photography cannot reach.
Even for readers unfamiliar with French I would recommmend "La Hulotte". At the beginning it was targeted to children but can be read at all ages. It is both humoresque and extremely informative. The late director of the Museum d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris, Jean Dorst, used to say that the only publication he could read thouroughly was "La Hulotte" and that he never found anything scientifically wrong in it. Of course it is focused of Western European Widlife.
To those of you who are interested by those magazines I'll supply more information with pleasure.
For climbing their is the excellent (Californian) Alpinist magazine. I see there are now higher quality versions for surfers and cyclists too.
Then there is wooden boat pornography and the like. Fine Homebuilding, Dwell, ID, Metropolis, Fine Woodworking, etc. all seem to be pretty much porn to me too. If you end up fetishcizing the tools and possessions, what is the difference between looking at a $10,000 Corian countertop and some high priced call girl?
I wish someone would just publish a magazine full of Leica, Rollei, and Linhof photos. Not photos made with those cameras. But photos OF those cameras. Mmmm, now that is something to lust over ;-)
Recently let my subscription to Practical Photography (UK) lapse because it was getting too dumbed-down.
Have replaced that with a subscription to View Camera (US), although I wasn't overwhelmed with the first issue I got.
Every now and then I will pick up a copy of Amateur Photographer (UK).
Outdoor Photography (UK) is the one magazine which continues to inspire me.
In recent months I have spent far too much money on books by Charlie Waite, Lee Frost and Joe Cornish.
I agree, Charlie Waite's books are awesome.
J Michael Sullivan
MAGNAchrom
Subscribe to Black & White Photography (UK) and occasionally buy View Camera and Outdoor Photography (UK).
Bob.
I stopped wasting my money on photo magazines many years ago, except VC and, occasionally, Black & White Photography (UK).
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