Quick Survey: Photo Magazines

[MJSfoto1956]

Dear List,

Besides the obvious candidates (i.e. View Camera, Camera Arts, LensWork, PDN, B&W) what other magazines do people here either read or subscribe to?

(bet there aren't many Popular Photography readers on this forum!) ;)

J Michael Sullivan

[Mike Boden]

I subscribe to National Geographic and Smithsonian that I not only enjoy for the pictures, but the stories.

I also subscribe to a bunch of audio magazines, but that's because I work in audio professionally.

[Gordon Moat]

Picture, CommArts, I.D., Graphis, Plaza, Dwell, WallPaper*, RangeFinder, The Big Picture, CITY, InterSection, CLEAR, Lürzer's Archive, cmyk, LFI (Leica Fotographie International), Leica World, Surface, PhotoLife, Reponses Photo, and The Daily. Basically, all those I have four or more copies, or continue to keep buying. I also browse numerous magazines when I am at Border's Books or Barnes & Noble.

Quite likely I missed a few others that I read or have kept copies as reference issues of images. Some of those would be various architectural magazines, or some automotive publications with outstanding photography (like Octane), and a few lifestyle magazines with great portrait work (BlackBook, HOBO, et al). I feel it is important to get away from the gear magazines a bit; especially some that seem like they would better belong in the computer area of the newsstand. Good photography largely draws me to magazines, but good writing keeps me with them.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat
A G Studio
<http://www.allgstudio.com>

[roteague]

Outdoor Photography (published in the UK)
Natures Best Photography
Photography Monthly (published in the UK)

[Ron Marshall]

View Camera, lots of interesting information.

Lenswork, lots of interesting photos.

[Darin Boville]

Zoom. Photo Review.

I used to look at those, at least. I not as interested in "photo magazines" as I was some years ago.

--Darin

[Glenn Thoreson]

I quit buying them years ago. No imformation I find practical for a bottom feeding hobbyist, just ads and reviews of the newest high tech stuff I can't afford. Magazines just aren't the same as they once were. They used to actually tell you how to do and make things you could use. I wonder what ever happened to that concept.

[Lee Hamiel]

Like Mike I also subscribe to NG & Smithsonian not just for the photography but also the stories.

I also have subscribed for years to Invention & Technology which has very good stories as well as some great early photography. It's a quarterly publication.

Being an auto enthusiast I also buy Octane which has some great stories & photography as well - not the usual car mag.

[Brian Ellis]

I subscribe to LensWork, Shutterbug, View Camera, and Photo Techniques but I don't read them avidly any more. The only reason I subscribe to Shutterbug is to keep up to date on the new digital stuff, most of the other editorial content is irrelevant to me since it's geared to wedding, portrait, etc. photographers. I've not been real thrilled with Photo Techniques lately. They're staddling both digital and darkroom and since I no longer do darkroom work about half the magazine is useless right off the bat and what's left often isn't all that great. I dropped B&W, there seemed to be too much of the same stuff issue after issue. I'm like Darin, I don't take the same interest in photo magazines as I used to and probably will dispense with all but one or two next year. I think the internet has to a large extent replaced (and in some ways bettered) magazines as a source of photography information.

[darr]

The Sun (http://www.thesunmagazine.org/)

[tim atherton]

Blindspot

Aperture (2 out of four issues)

Prefix Photo

Art on Paper - sometimes

And some issues of those Gordon mentioned - Dwell, Wallpaper I.D. etc

[tim atherton]

darr has a good point - although the reproduction isn't always the best there a good number of literary and such magazines that run some good photography too

Brick in Canada is one. Oh and some issues of Border Crossings as well

[Helen Bach]

Blind Spot

Next Level

Aperture occasionally

Nothing else regularly.

I miss DoubleTake, but haven't read DoubleTake/Points of Entry.

Living in the past, I still re-read Ten&#183;8. Nothing quite like it. Those were the days.

Best,
Helen

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

I am surprised nobody has mentioned Shots.... a small quaterly, not very well printed but they manage to put some interesting stuff once in a while... :)

[Ed Richards]

I mostly get a coffee and browse the mags at Borders or B&N. I will buy an issue with a couple of good articles to help support the mags, but 90% of the time you can get through all of the useful stuff in about 2 minutes. I subscribe to View Camera and Phototechniques, as much to support the enterprise as for the content. Maybe as a LF photographer I find that the mags just rub it in that there is no good reason to shoot LF if you want to publish in mags.:-)

[Mike H.]

View Camera, LensWork, Aperture, Smithsonian, National Geographic, Arizona Highways, uhhh.... Think that's it. Did have B&W and Black and White. And Camera Arts. And Nikon World.

[Capocheny]

I love to read magazines and I spend way too much money on them... but, it sure does beat watching infomercials at 3:00 in the morning!

View Camera, Camera Arts, LensWork, PDN, B&W, Aperture (every so often), Digital Photography, Photoshop, Wine Spectator, QRW Wines, Wines & Spirits, Decanter, The Economist, ... the list goes on and on and on!

So many GREAT magazines and so little time!

Cheers

[Gary Smith]

I would subscribe to View Camera if the shipping cost wasn't crazy to get it here. I buy Nihon Camera, Asahi Camera as well as Keishikishashin (Landscape Photography) here in Japan.

Gary

[Frank Petronio]

Lately I have been giving them away, plus a lot of my photo books. I am trying to empty my head of images, to leave more hard disk space.

[tim atherton]

hah - now I've got an image of you as Max Headroom...

[robc]

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.

[Keith S. Walklet]

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.

[QT Luong]

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.

[Keith Laban]

None

[Emmanuel BIGLER]

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.

[Frank Petronio]

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 ;-)

[Stewart Skelt]

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.

[MJSfoto1956]

I agree, Charlie Waite's books are awesome.

J Michael Sullivan
MAGNAchrom

[Bobf]

Subscribe to Black & White Photography (UK) and occasionally buy View Camera and Outdoor Photography (UK).

Bob.

[BrianShaw]

I stopped wasting my money on photo magazines many years ago, except VC and, occasionally, Black & White Photography (UK).

[martin diedrich]

Another vote for the UK magazine "B&W Photography", which
has great photography, good advice on practical and
technical issues, and a balanced approach to film and
digital, with a regular strand of LF discussions. The magazine
is run by an enthusiastic editorial team who have managed
to create a monthly magazine that has real "personality".
I have read it since Issue 1 and enjoy every issue.

Web:
http://www.thegmcgroup.com/item--Black-and-White-Photography--1003BW.html

This UK publication is entirely different from the US magazine
"B&W Magazine" (http://www.bandwmag.com/), which I think
is more collector-oriented.

Martin

[John Kasaian]

View Camera (a gift subscription from my Bride!) Film and chemicals seem to gobble up my magazine money---hey, thats not a bad thing, is it? I do enjoy taking gander at B&W( the UK version) Lens Work, and Photo Techniques when Borders gets them in, but chemicals & film get the $$$.

[paulr]

I gave up when Doubletake went under. Now I mostly look at Aperture at the newstands, or at the various cool online zines (like Seasaw).

Hellen, thanks for the heads-up on DoubleTake/Points of Entry. I read about it first right here and now!

Frank, I'm happy to see you mentioning Alpinist. My all-time favorite magazine of any kind. Do you climb things?

They're actually not Californian ... published by Christian Beckwith, right in Jackson, Wyoming. I plan to resubscribe when I have some cash flow again. They need every penny they can get. Right now they're sustained by a single investor. The handful of ads and subscriptions hardly makes a dent in their lavish printing costs. Which is why it's kind of an like art mag. Which must be why we're talking about it here.

[Hans Berkhout]

VC issues from the newsstand. Not so much to learn, more to see what others do. PhotoTechniques subscription, probably for one more year. Mainly interested in writings by Vestal, Bond and the retired Kodak people, forgot their names. Invisible editor, no clear direction. Equipment reviews usually end with reviewer stating that the reviewed item is now part of his/her outfit.

[Darin Boville]

Hey,

The new B&W just came in today--cover is old Bob Dylan images.

I'll let others supply the needed commnetary.

--Darin

[Jim MacKenzie]

Popular Photography... for years, although the film content is getting very thin (I don't shoot digital). This subscription will likely be allowed to lapse.
Black and White Photography (UK)... just subscribed. To use the lingo, I was gobsmacked by June's issue, which I bought to read on a boring flight to Toronto. It ate up a good chunk of the time.
View Camera... just subscribed. Got a stack of back issues with my recent 4x5 system purchase and this magazine is well worth supporting.
Photo Life (Canada)... Consistently good and very inexpensive since I actually live in Canada

I get Chasseur d'Images occasionally, although it's hard to find here. I picked up an issue in Montreal in May - it wasn't as good as the magazine was four or five years ago but it was still good.

I sometimes buy Practical Photography, Photography Monthly or Outdoor Photography (all UK). They are all quite good. Practical used to be my favourite magazine but again, the digital content is just getting too high. I don't care about digital. (Yes, I know I'm in a tiny minority, but it's my right to be different. :) )

[Michael Graves]

View Camera, Infoworld, Writer's Post Journal (an absolutely MARVELOUS literary journal, if you like fiction), Missouri Review and PC Magazine.

Sorry. Only one photo magazine.

[Jim Chinn]

I quit subscribing to all magazines last year. I found that there was always a few issues of each mag during the year I would have left on the shelf at the bookstore, so it costs the same or is chaeper to buy off the shelf. Also as time goes by it simply seems you see the same photographers with the same images repeated in different magazines and a lot of content I now find uninteresting.

The problem with subscribing is I have a bad habit of subscribing just before they go out of business. After buying Camera and Darkroom off the shelf for a few years in the late 80s and early 90s I subscribed and then after 2 issues they went under. Same with Photovision. I subscribed and got stuck with finishing my subscription with Outdoor Photogrpaher, fine for some but not something I was remotely interested in. I do plan on subscribing to Emulsion when it comes out. (Hope I am not the kiss of death for that effort).

I do buy Lens Work and View Camera on a pretty regualr basis and maybe half a years worth of B&W. I used to buy the British magazine Black and White Photography but most of the technical stuff (at least film and wet printing related) has been discussed in back issues of any number of mags or books I have sitting on the shelf. The rest of the content makes it hard to justify the $10 price tag per issue.

As far as camera reviews or digital information, I find the internet to be much more timely and informative then an issue of Pop Photo or Shutterbug and ever changing technology makes such magazines worthless to save for future reference.

Borders of course is a God send for budget conscious folks. With a few minutes on the way home and a cup of coffee I can still read David Vestal in Photo Techniques, look through Camera Arts, Zoom, PDN, Aperture and Blind Spot. Sometimes I pick up a copy of Art in America, Sculpture or Art on Paper and leaf through issues of Modern Painters, Art Review, Metalsmith and Art News.

All in all I have taken all the money I used to spend on buying magazines and use it to buy books containing photographs. I find books a much better investment and provide more long term enjoyment compared to magazines.

[Richard Kelham]

Blind Spot

Next Level

Aperture occasionally

Nothing else regularly.

I miss DoubleTake, but haven't read DoubleTake/Points of Entry.

Living in the past, I still re-read Ten·8. Nothing quite like it. Those were the days.


I'll second Next Level (and Portfolio) as they are usually on my list, along with BJP, and Black & White (UK). Ag and View Camera are the only ones I subscribe to. Haven't seen a copy of Aperture for a while but Borders have opened a branch in Norwich so they might have it...

When in France I used to buy a copy of Photo. Is it still published?

Like Helen I still miss Ten8.

[David G. Gagnon]

Subscribe to Photo Techniques and Shutterbug. Occasionally I'll buy a View Camera at Barnes and Noble if it looks interesting enough. I have to time my trip to B&N just right as that's the only store near me that carries it and once the current issue is gone, they don't seem to reorder. :(

DG

[Diane Maher]

Amateur Photographer (UK)
Black and White Photography (UK)
Mono (UK)
View Camera
Lens Work
Outdoor Photographer (US)

I think that's it. :)

[paulr]

The problem with subscribing is I have a bad habit of subscribing just before they go out of business.

yeah, now that you mention it, i've had a knack for that too. camera & darkroom and doubletake both did that to me. so did a magazine started by one of c&d's editors. it went under right after i subscribed and right before an article about my work was supposed to come out. it took me three years to get my prints back!

[roteague]

I just picked up a copy of the latest issue of Natures Best Photography Magazine, which I absolutely love - it is a quarterly.

[roteague]

Outdoor Photographer (US)

I was a charter subscriber, but lost interest a couple of years ago for their pro-digital, anti-film stance.

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

I was a charter subscriber, but lost interest a couple of years ago for their pro-digital, anti-film stance.
The funny thing is that up to this date, they still use shots which where taken with film as their cover and best shots. The worst thing is their dumb speculations, I made the msitake of buying last months issue (nothing to do while getting chemo) and the cover was by this very good photographer who died a few years ago, I want to say Galen Rowell, but I am not sure if this is right. Anyhow the caption was shot taken by xxxxxx on film, but if he was still alive he would be using a digital camera, blah, blah, balh.....what a bunch of BS.

[Robert Skeoch]

The only magazine I get now is "Time".... I just got bored with the photo mags. Seems to be the same old articles and I don't care about most of the digital stuff. As a working pro who uses digital everyday I get my information from the internet. Any new pro-digi body that comes out will be written about on the internet long before the mags get one.
I buy VC once in a while but don't find it that great.
Years ago I used to get American Photographer before it resized itself as American Photo. I thought it was the best mag. ever when it was doing stories on guys like David Burnett but that was years ago and it's been a dog for a while.
I find anytime they put a hottie on the front to sell the magazine is proof that the writting is bad. If they had great writting they wouldn't need sex to sell the publication.
I'd like to buy more magazines but they just don't seem that interesting.
-Rob Skeoch

[Paul Coppin]

Very few now. B&W (US) occasionally, browse aperature when I see it. Left the "Pop photo" mags behind several years ago, notably when they collectively decided that film was no longer available, and you were a maroon if you bought any anyway... NG has been my biggest disappointment - I let it go a few year back when they entered the TV market, after having had it around literally for decades (and grew up reading back issues from the 30s and 40s stuffed away in my parent's closets). Between TV and their websites the magazine has taken a huge nosedive. Most of the articles now are simply a frontend for their web. I also got the idea that the photography had also slipped, but that may have been my general dissatisfaction.
I think ad revenues are down. Another mag I pick up frequently is Sky & Telescope (another optical hobby), and I've noticed in the last two issues that its noticeably thinner. Some of the vendors seem to be missing too.

[J D Clark]

I'd like to ask a question here that is a slight digression -- Camera Arts was mentioned only once in the entire thread. I've been annoyed at their submission guidelines, which very conspicuously states:

"We only accept work captured with small to medium format cameras. No work done with large format cameras can be accepted at this time."

Now, to me, an image is an image, and I don't at all understand the exclusion of work done with large format cameras -- does anyone know what this is about?

John Clark
www.johndclark.com

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

I'd like to ask a question here that is a slight digression -- Camera Arts was mentioned only once in the entire thread. I've been annoyed at their submission guidelines, which very conspicuously states:

"We only accept work captured with small to medium format cameras. No work done with large format cameras can be accepted at this time."

Now, to me, an image is an image, and I don't at all understand the exclusion of work done with large format cameras -- does anyone know what this is about?

John Clark
www.johndclark.com
Most likely a non competition clause with Simmons and VC magazine.

[Ed K.]

None.

And, worth a rant from another universe -

Who needs all the advertising and thin articles with no depth to them? If the magazines didn't seem to have so much "filler" and "advertainment" in them, I might wish to purchase some simply to support the publishers and the furthering of the arts. In fact, I used to buy sometimes in part because I felt that artists I liked were being paid well for their work by the magazines. Today, I get the feeling that the artists are not being paid what they deserve yet the cover price is right up there.

Recently, I've started to read very old books on photography, from the second-hand book store. It is also possible to get old photo magazines - they are around everywhere. Between the books and the old magazines, it is a wonder how many articles reappear over and over again throughout the years, and surprising to see how in many cases, the older treatments were more meaningful and better prepared.

If the magazines would risk more depth and quality in their articles, I would buy them again perhaps, however I do admit that the Internet has replaced the time for magazine reading, and who has space for all the piles of magazines anymore?

As the money-making photography items are mostly commodities, sold by ever larger and fewer stores, the advertising base is degraded. This, coupled with a bit of greed for a fast buck perhaps, as well as high costs of doing business put pressure on the non-advertising content budget. It's a tough call to make. For magazines to survive, they will need to risk a large investment in quality content, along with higher per-issue charges. It doesn't sound like something that will work for them.

The future of the magazine is probably the Internet. The trouble is how to convert what is mostly free of charge into a pay per view system without incurring the wrath of Internet users. The key would be content of amazing value. Again, it doesn't sound like it will happen soon enough to save them. I think that heyday of the magazine is over, it is doomed.

I wonder which will die sooner, large format color slide film or printed magazines?

[Louie Powell]

View Camera, Lenswork, B+W (the American version), and PhotoTechniques. I may not renew PhotoTechniques when the subscription expires - it's becoming too digicentric. The main think causing me to keep it on is David Vestal's column - the world needs his brand of common sense.

Have occasionally purchased Focus, but it strikes me as a failed attempt to emulate B+W

The English Black & White is good, and I do occasionally pick it up at Borders.

[Richard Kelham]

The future of the magazine is probably the Internet. The trouble is how to convert what is mostly free of charge into a pay per view system without incurring the wrath of Internet users. The key would be content of amazing value. Again, it doesn't sound like it will happen soon enough to save them. I think that heyday of the magazine is over, it is doomed.



On the subject of internet magazines there is of course The Large Format Journal http://www.thelargeformatjournal.com/
which is well worth a look. It should have been on my list...


Richard

[steve simmons]

Tim Anderson, who bought Camera Arts, wanted a non compete cause so I would not either expand View Camera to include smaller format images or start another magazine for smaller format. This is typical. If I'd sold a restaurant the new owner would want a non compete clause so I would not open a new restaurant just down the street.

steve simmons

[paulr]

For magazines to survive, they will need to risk a large investment in quality content, along with higher per-issue charges. It doesn't sound like something that will work for them.

It works for some. Aperture is like that, so was Doubletake. There are a lot of others. The thing is, non advertising-based magazines are a totally different world. Especially the nicely printed art magazines. They're basically art books that come out as periodicals. Someone has to foot the bill. It's either grants, an investor who's got something up his sleeve, or a small group of enthusiasts willing to pay $12 to $25 an issue. So it's always going to be a smaller market.