Photography Magazines

There was a time, way back in my teen years, that when I approached a newsstand I gravitated towards the sports magazines, and was apt to pick up the latest copy of The Sporting News or Sport (I was never a big fan of Sports Illustrated though) or one of the many baseball oriented publications. Then, for the longest time, my attention was focused on the rack holding the music mags, and I often took home a copy of The Record, Musician (remember those?) or more recently CMJ, No Depression, Paste, Magnet, Goldmine or Uncut (there are others, like Mojo, that I've subscribed to so I could ignore them on the shelf). But as you probably know, the bottom has dropped out of the magazine market in the last couple of years, and many of those titles no longer exist (at least not in paper copies). The music selection now is so thin that it's barely worth a glance (usually to see what the subject of the Uncut CD that month is). Luckily, however, there appears to be a growth area in magazine publishing and it just happens to correspond with my latest hobby (I must not be the only one diving in) and that's photography-- specifically digital photography. I actually started subscribing to Popular Photography (a venerable publication that I read pretty regularly ten or so years ago when I bought my first SLR) and also another mag called Digital Photography, but whenever I stop in at a Barnes & Noble or Borders, there are at least a dozen others to check out, and I usually snag at least one based on some feature that month (I'm especially a sucker for articles about how to shoot in low-light, or on converting color shots to black and white). This must be a booming market, which is evident from the abundant ads for high end equipment that fills all of these magazines. It's actually a little frustrating to read an article about bargain lenses, or some other gadget, and discover the editors consider something priced at $1200 a steal. But aside from that, I've learned a lot, and the photography section gives me a place to actually browse. I can't tell you which of these publications is the best, because frankly, they mostly all cover exactly the same material, just in slightly different configurations. But the British titles like Practical Photography and Digital Photo (not to be confused with Digital Photography) often include a free CD with editing software or short instructional videos, so they tend to attract my attention. I just find it interesting that as many of my favorite music magazines seem to be going bust, the photography mags are proliferating at an amazing rate. I guess that's got to be a least a little reassuring to the publishing industry as a whole.