Too many photo mags?

[Geoff Harris]

Do people think there are too many photo mags out there at the moment? A couple more have just been launched

I do, but I am biased, as more mags could cannabilise the market rather than expand it, but what do you objective consumers think? Are all these mags good for the consumer or are they hard to tell apart after a while?

What are you still buying photo mags for, with so many free photo websites out there

Be as honest as you want and don't worry about offending my sensibilities!

Geoff Harris, Editor

[PolaroidSky]

Absolutely too many magazines with too narrow a inspiring feature base that mostly do nothing to stretch photographers abilities or push them to do more evolved work.

Most treat the reader as a consumer first and photographer second.

Many are too traditional in their layout, heavy on gear reviews and ad's for gear out of the normal price range (mine at least!) and too many obvious tips aimed at obvious results.

More serious interviews with masters both past and present of different genres. More focus on ground level efforts to support photographic endeavours such as galleries and shows and not those always by big name galleries. Less focus on 10K cameras or lenses.

More attention to the heart and passion of photography and less attention to technical processes, fads and gimmicks though a magazine that dealt with great images, ethics and projects over great gear, software and trends would be awesome but hard to generate advertising within I am sure ; )

Magazines and books are still tactile objects and given that the hard copy is filled with things desirable they are still chosen first (by myself at least) to on line pdf's or sites though they both can co exist side by side happily.

[Cathus]

Definitely too many, and I should know because I buy most of them. I put this down to an acquisitive personality which means I collect stuff that I end up not using. You should see my book, CD & DVD collections!

I suppose I get so many mags because I don't like the idea that I might be missing out on something. I've subscribed to DCMag for several years & subscribed to one other (which I stopped this year as I don't like the direction it was going).

Articles in mags are so similar & spookily often appear in the same month that it's hard not to believe there isn;t a panel of editors sitting round a table discussing what they'll all do next month.

Unfortunately, it seems that in order to sell the most mags one needs to copy everyone else's content & all of them end up being inter-changeable, you can't really tell which article comes from which mag.
For instance, the mag I cancelled is supposed to be dedicated to DSLRs but now regularly features non-DSLR reviews thus apparently trying to appeal to a wider market to sell more issues.

[Quoth the Raven]

I'm not sure that there are too many - choice can be a good thing.

However, there is very little difference between many of them and they tend to repeat content quite a lot. In the last couple of months two new magazines have appeared which appealed to me as they are meant to cater for the "advanced" or "enthusiast" photographer, ie the one who has been in the game for a while and needs a step-up from the beginner level.

Because of the amount of repetitive content, I only subscribe to one photography magazine (and that was because of a special offer saving 50% in perpetuity) and then browse others in newsagents, buying the one I find most interesting. I am also fortunate in that my local library stocks a weekly photography magazine along with a couple of the monthlys.

[ABERS]

Most people realise that first and foremost any magazine is a business, not some altruistic endeavour wanting to spread learning and light into the world. They would have us think that however, since that is their usp, making absurd statements such as 'How to take stunning images or pictures like the pro's (whatever that means!).

They depend greatly on their income from advertising and therefore purchasers are inundated with pages of such material, and since most advertisers' adverts are the same in each magazine that adds to the 'sameness' that everyone seems to notice. However that being said there is a remarkable framiliarity between the current crop in as far as editorial and features are concerned, but they have to be all things to all people unless they concentrate on one genre, i.e. B+W magazine.

They have a difficult job in making their particular publication different from all those others on the shelf, but none of them make very good fist of it.

[Forseti]

For me personally I find repetitiveness to be an issue which, whilst inevitable to a certain extent, is the prime reason that I gave up subscribing to photography related magazines. I also found the tutorials, not just in DCMag but others also, to be very much along the lines of paint by numbers - one moved sliders around to the settings stated with no explanation as to why or any possible consequences/side effects. As an example, I read through another magazine a couple of days ago that a visiting friend brought over and which featured an 'Apprentice' section. This particular magazine committed nine, yes nine, pages to HDR photography and whilst some of the images themselves were nice - although taking up far too much space, a beginner to this particular subject would have gained relatively nothing from reading the text which was lacking in any detail. I sometimes get the feeling that whilst the authors of written text are perhaps quite knowledgeable they lack the written communication skills to convey this information.

My preference at this time is to buy dedicated books from established and respected authors for any particular area of photography that I may wish to study in more depth. Then of course we have the Internet - a vast source of freely available information with both written and video tutorials, some by subscription but many free.

As to the question 'are there too many photo mags out there', then my view would be probably yes - saturation point has been reached, certainly as regards magazines aimed solely at the amateur consumer. Now were DCMag to change course somewhat and produce a magazine more in the direction as suggested by PolaroidSky then possibly my interest in the magazine would be reawakened.

[karenoliver]

Buying magazines is an expensive business and with so many to choose from you just have to settle on one or two. I generally buy DCmag when it comes out and subscribe to Aperture magazine ( I get that 4 times per year). Any others I tend to read on the shelves. There are too many and the content is replicated, even on the web the content on sites is replicated by others. I read magazines when I am travelling , in a waiting room or just want something to flick through when having a coffee break. I've never understood why someone hasn't taken the plunge and moved to TV. Sky has numerous special interest channels but nothing related to photography. I'd happily pay a monthly subscription on top of my sky bill for a photography channel that had live workshops, interviews, documentaries and live chat. Whoever made that leap of faith would get advertising from canon , nikon, and a whole range of photographic companies. Failing that an online magazine channel with specialised content for members only who paid a monthly subscription.

I'd like to see a more indepth look at photographic genres, with a look at masters consisting of interviews and critiques. Its all well and good knowing how to use a camera but if you can't construct a shot or communicate meaning with it what is the point? For that info I buy photography books and go to galleries.

Karen

[AndyStevens]

I can't really add to the comments above - but would echo that I think there are too many mags out there. I guess the plus point here is photography is becoming more widespread probably by the growth of digital. So, our hobby is increasing, which is good, but do we need multiple 'how to take stunning autumn shots' blaring at us from the shelves? No. And these articles are almost reworks of the 2009 'how to take stunning autumn shots'.

As for printed mag over online - I was reading a work related forum discussion where people were amazed that the iPad isnt really being used for reading. People like handling books and mags - I know I do and others have mentioned it here.

I subscribe to one mag (sorry Future, it's not one of yours) and I then buy another one or two each month (spend a lot of time on the tube!) - but these 'extra' mags have to have a lot of interest. I wont buy a mag just because Joe Cornish is being interviewed in it. It needs to have multiple points of interest and not be one brilliant interview sandwiched between the same old kit reviews and 'paint by numbers' tutorials. A quarterly, in-depth magazine/book would probably get my vote. A street special with big names interviewed - or even discussing their craft among themselves. Then a landscape version, then a portrait - but what do you do next year not to keep repeating...

But it must be a nightmare for publishers - how to make your mag(s) appeal to everyone...

And I wasn't going to add anything

[Eyeayen]

I subscribe to DC mag and get 2 others given to me every issue so I have plenty to read, but there are way too many. Last count in WHSmits was 24. 3 were dedicated Canon mags too. Some others have really gone down hill with change of editor and whatever so I stopped even picking them up to look at them and too many are sealed in bags and I've been lured into that before with clever cover text only to find a pathetic one or two page article inside.

Printing must be cheap at the moment because so many 'part work' type mags have appeared again since last Christmas. A friend of mine bought a model car one, he spent £800 getting all the parts and it took him 2 years to build the radio controlled car. He could have gone to a model shop and bought it ( the very same kit ! ) for a quarter of the price and built it in a day or two...

Magazines are without a doubt over saturated, there is something for everything and all the creative ones my girlfriend or I buy seem to be about five or six quid, ( Thats GBP ( £ ) to anyone outside the UK ) and it's just too much to fork out for when all they do is repeat articles year after year.

[JulianBaird]

Choice is good, but I do find there is a lot of repetition. However this does stop me from jumping from magazine to magazine too much as I rarely get anything compelling from other mags. I was a DSLR User Magazine subscriber for 3 years before jumping here to DCM. After 3 years with DSLR User things had got stale and I think I'd outgrown the magazine in both terms of content and skill level. I feel that DCM aims a slightly higher level of photographer.

No matter what magazine you read though, I think Geoff's point on why people still buy magazines these days is interesting. For me (at least at the moment) online content is no replacement for a magazine. I like both, couldn't imagine life without online content, but the magazine is just important. I like it when my subs copy of DCM drops through the door. There's nothing better than looking at some amazing pictures on a glossy page. Magazines are handy as well. They can sit on my coffee table and I pick up for a casual read, or I can stuff one in my bag to read when I'm traveling. And while content readers such as the iPad, Kindle etc are coming on leaps and bounds I would still want my magazine.

What would be nice though would be as a subscriber I could access both print and digital copies of the magazine. I would even consider pay a little more extra on my subs cost for that. A digital copy would be good for a number of reasons. Firstly, after I have fully read my magazine I normally recycle it but it would be nice to have a digital copy for reference. Also, just the convience of having both would be nice. I could read the mag at work, or just access where ever and when ever.