The sorry state of Outdoor Photographer Magazine

[paal_jensen]

I have subscribed to Outdoor Photographer magazine for 2 years. However, this magazine seem suspect for three reasons: 1) The advertorials, 2) A dumping place for regular contributors left hand work, and 3) contents (too basic, too lame, too much stereotype photography).

 

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1) the advertorials is nothing short of amazing. I've never seen anything like it in publishing. Many of the columninsts use their columns as vehicle for promoting their own business and products (with phone numbers). In addition, they do all they can to promote brands of equipment even when the contents of the column has nothing to do with equipment; eg. "My Brand X lens fits nicely in my brand Y bag". Pathetic! Even more, if you read between the lines the endorsement of brands are even more suspect; tyros get the impression that contributor X use brand Y eqiupment and if you don't do the same you cannot expect professional results. Also, features that is not present in the system contributor Z is using is in fact totally useless anyway. What makes it even more bizzare is the fact that their tests, where they are indeed entitled to express their opinions, are nothing more than product descriptions. In fact in some instances the test is partly copied word for word from the brochure from the manufacturer. Whats the point? Whats more, some articles that looks like general information of types of equipment and their use, are indeed an advertisement for a particular product and they provide the phone number and adress of the manufacturer.

I don't know anything about american law, but over here they would have been shut down by the authorities because of illegal marketing.

 

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2) Outdoor Photographer says that they have a tough job in choosing between the numerous high quality submissions they receive. Still they publish left hand work by photographer with a name (often with books to sell). EG. last year they published pictures by Muench, apparently a nice postcard photographer. Half of those pictures I would never have sent from me for publishing. One had unlevel horizon. Another should have been extensively cropped, and the third had an out-of-focus branch protruding into the right corner of the picture. This september, they published Galen Rowell really uninspired shots from Tasmania. There are hundreds of thousand of amateur photographer from all parts of the world that can provide just as good or better shots. If they wanted a story from Tasmania they should have contacted some of the photographers operating in that area.

 

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3) The magazine have a sort of lifeless and boring, sort of childish educational, way of writing. I've seen this style before in american publications (but nowhere else). I get a bit offended by this style cause I get the impression that the editors thinks their readers are idiots.

 

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Are there any good nature photography magazines out there?

[barry_crowder1]

It costs more than US$1.00 to actually publish a single issue of a magazine. So if they are charging this little for subscriptions, we know they have to make their living from advertisers. So I'm not surprised to see the bias you noted.

<p>FWIW, My subscription for this magazine expired last Jan, but they keep sending it--even with my recent address change. I suspect that this is so they can keep their circulation numbers up and therefore get more ad money.

[peter_pflasterer]

As someone with a business myself (not in publishing), I can tell you that it's hard to make a living selling your product. The best a business can do is to pick its niche and design its product to appeal to the largest number of possible customers. Any one product (magazine) can't be all things to all people; the proof of this is that even with many, many satisfied customers, a business can run into someone like you, to whom the product doesn't apply, but just wants to trash it publicly.

 

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If you don't like the magazine, don't buy it; don't read it. If you think you can do better, start your own or offer the publisher some constructive criticism that might help guide the magazine more in a direction you'd like. Successful businesses respond to thoughtful comments from their customers.

[paul_wilson2]

For once I agree with Paal. I would rate the state of OP a few grades below sorry, dismal would be about right.

 

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If you're looking for a good nature photography magazine, try Nature Photographer. It's a pretty decent magazine and there's a link from Bob Atkins's page. Another magazine that's quite good, though not strictly about nature photography, is the Canadian magazine PhotoLife. About half their articles seem to be about nature photography.

[x._canadian]

Paul, Can you post an address or phone number for PhotoLife?

[vagrant]

PhotoLife is my favorite, as well. Good quality photos, paper, and

articles. They also succumb to using 'advertorials', but it is

always stated up front in the articles' title.

 

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www.photolife.com

 

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PHOTO LIFE

Toronto Dominion Bank Tower

55 King Street West

P.O. Box 77, Suite 2550

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

M5K 1E7

[bobatkins]

OP varies wildly between OK (sometimes even good) and abysmal. Their

"product reviews" are an absolute joke. They should be ashamed of

wasting the trees to print them on. They have decent pictorial

articles from time to time, often from their "regular" contibutors.

 

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I dropped my subscrition a few years back, then resubscribed when

I got an offer of under $10/yr. I won't bother to renew when it

runs out. They seem to be pushing digital hard, probably to boost

sales of their digial imaging offshoot magazine.

 

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They did change editors a few years back I understand. Someone

said the current editor used to be at "Photographic". Don't know

if it's true, but if it is, it's not exactly a resume to be proud of!

Photographic may be even worse than OP!

 

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Anything better? That's a hard question. I've written for

Nature Photographer quite a few times. They're OK, but quite

honestly I can't say that they really stand out above the rest

either in their choice of articles or the originality of the

images they chose to print. They're small, so they don't have

the resources of the big magazines. They certainly seem to

try a lot harder then the big name magazines though, and I think

they care more about what they are doing.

 

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An interesting question is what exactly you would want in a

nature photography magazine? What would make it the magazine

you would buy? Remember you have to cater to all levels of

experience if you want a hope of selling the magazine.

[norman_ewbank]

I agree with Pasl Jensen. This magazine is in a sorry state. It shouls be given away, free, at photo shops.s

[chris_buchanan]

Paal, was that David Muench who did the postcards you mentioned in OP. I think you will be impressed with this "postcard photog" if you take a look at one of his books. There are no postcards in the books I own by David Muench. I have never subscribed to OP. I always buy several magazines of the ones I'm considering first. Its at the point where my favorite magazines are bi-monthly or quarterly, not neccesarily just photog. magazines. Peter Pflasterer has it right though, I agree with his opinion. When I listen to the radio, TV, read a newspaper, I can always turn it off, switch the station, or put it down, I love that option, always works.

[wesley_ebisuzaki]

I like OP. It's the only magazine which even attempts to describe the "zen of photography." The British mags are into critiquing photographs. Fine but boring after the same mistake is repeated ten times. Some other magazines are into testing photo equipment and describing the latest from Japan. Useful information but photography is more than equipement reviews. OP at least has articles on the process of taking photographs.

 

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OP has its flaws. The equipement reviews are often a joke. The articles and photographs vary greatly in quality.

 

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Wesley Ebisuzaki

[anthonty_debase]

While I was one of those people left confused and unsure after reading the Sigma 175-500 review I also read the interview with Jim Brandenburg which I found very interesting. Did anybody notice that he starts out being rather critical of wildlife photgraphers running around with 800mm lenses in Yellowstone, but later admits to having a 1000mm close by on a shoot. Furthermore, he mentions using a 1200mm to shoot some wolves. I guess it's easy to pooh pooh the 800mm stuff when you have 1000mm and 1200m big guns available. Still his comments on the asthetics and his attitudes towards photography were interesting.

[paal_jensen]

By all means there are interesting photographs and articles in Outdoor Photographer, also from the regular contributors. I do not wish to flame Rowell or Muench, although I have no wish to see their bad work; I have enough with my own bad pictures. Its the questionable business practice I like to adress. Outdoor Photographer isn't as much photo magazine as it is a marketing vehicle for a handful of persons personal business:

1) they do market themselves personally, their name, photos and products through the editorial contents of the magazine.

2) they do endorse products through the editorial contents of the magazine. The reason for this can only be economical or in order for them personally to get goodwill from the manufacturer. Such advertisement is far more powerfull than a one page advertisement.

All this are violations of universally aclaimed press ethics. It's a pity that a nature photography magazine, that often talk about ethics in nature photography, is unable or unwilling to follow the most basic business ethics in publishing.

 

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Taste in pictures are different. However, I see no point in publishing technically bad pictures regardless of who the photographer are. One of the columnist is an expert in publishing technically hopeless pictures out of context with the content of the article, only in order for him to state that he took this picture with his brand X lens. Two of them are particularly easy to remember; one of a unsharp bear with its buttocks out of the frame and the other of a stream where the water was flowing uphill because of a unlevel horizon.

 

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Outdoor photographer could have been a good magazine if they stopped pushing those advertorials and stopped publishing technically bad photographs by friends and relatives.

[jeff_hallett]

OP would do well to place in an upcoming issue, a rating scale

with questions posed about readers opinions of various topics re

the magazine. included could be a section devoted to what the reader

like to see changed,improved, added or deleted.

in addition to Nature Photographer has anyone seen PhotoTechnique.

in my opinion a great well-rounded magazine from Great Britain.

get a copy and see if you don,t agree! well maybe you won't but

ck it out anyhow!

[jim_bridges2]

Rob Sheppard became Editor of Outdoor Photographer in December of 1995. He was an Associate Editor for Photographic before coming over to OP as a Associate Editor. To qoute Steve Werner about Rob... "His past ad agency and public relations experience has taught him how to recognize and address audience needs and interests." Well at least Steve got the ad agency part right!

 

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I emailed Rob about all the ads I was seeing in OP, and ask him if OP was going to become like the other photo magazines on the newstands.. filled with more ads than good articles, and photographes. His reply was "to get better articles you need more ads". I didn't care much for this reply, so I no longer subscribe to OP!

 

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OP has a web site http://www.outphotographer.com and you should let them know how you feel about the direction the magazine is headed. I did, but it didn't seem to do much good. I guess my $22.00 bucks a year wasn't very important to them.

[james_r_babb]

Like most magazines, OP is in the business of selling advertising; subscriber fees in the $15/yr range generally either barely or don't quite cover the costs of plant, manufacturing, and distribution, and any profit (the reason for a business to exist, after all) comes from ad revenues.

 

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Really good magazines (Atlantic Monthly, say) have always maintained an inviolable wall between editorial and marketing. In average magazines these days, that wall has become very porous, and marketing often overly influences editorial content--often by going over editorial's head to the parent company's CFO (and since most magazines these days have a parent company, this is usually successful).

 

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In the worst magazines of all, though, the editors have marketing backgrounds. I've been in publishing 15 years (books and magazines), and I've yet to see a marketing person who didn't feel he or she knew precisely what people wanted to read or see and in truth--as shown by the only true meter of a magazine's value to its readers: renewal rates--didn't have a clue.

 

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They sure know what the advertisers want, though, which is product placement and just enough editorial/art content to troll up new faces from the newstands. OP fits my definition of a magazine run by a marketing person.

 

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Despite its flaws, OP's better than nothing, and sometimes it accidentally runs good articles, as do Pop Photo and Shutterbug (but not Photographic, as near as I can tell--OP's Editor du jour's alma mater). Collectively, however, most of their content is dross.

 

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Nature Photographer I've seen once, and it wasn't bad but it looks like a shoestring operation--one that should be encouraged, I think, lest it go the way of most struggling magazines, not to mention do dos and passenger pigeons.

 

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Has anyone seen Camera Arts from the guy who publishes View Camera? Trying to find a copy here in rural Maine, but so far no success.

[john_costello]

Paal,

 

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Please go to your local bookstore and pull four or five of David Muench's books off the shelf. Open and look. If you still feel he is just a postcard photographer, let me know.

 

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I know that your main point was not to denigrate a highly respected photographer, but to criticize the OP magazine. I share your opinion about the magazine.

[jeff_hallett]

I agree with most of the comments re: OP. They are being swayed too much to the digital revolution. I know most everyone but myself on this forum is into that but I,d still like to see them do some of what

Nature Photographer does. Yes, NP is a shoestring operation but they do get the job done and stick to the theme, OUTDOOR photography.

To not offend the digital enthusiasts, maybe OP could include a supplementary magazine like Shutterbug does, directed at the purists like myself.

[bobatkins]

I think it's the other way around with OP. They have a second

publication directed not at the purists, but specifically for

the digital imagers and manipulators!

 

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I think OP has made it very clear which side of the digital fence

they are on.

[stanley_mcmanus]

I have not renewed my subscription. The last few issues have offered very little to benefit me. Even the columnes and the feature articles seem to look more like ads. This is bad. We could really use a good nature photgrapher magazine.

[marv_thompson]

O.P. is not the only magazine that has a problem photographically. all of the "off the shelf" magazine rack magazines have the same problem, notably a lack of pictures. articles, generally, have one image to illustrate them, and rarely if ever is this image even related to the article. when they do run portfolios, which is seldom, it only seems to be in conjumction with the release of a book or an upcoming traveling exhibit. this wasn't always so, i remember american photographer of ten to fifteen years ago that featured a different photograher in each issue, with a story and descent portfolio by each. this is where i first encountered the likes of O. Winston Link and Morely Baer, two excelent photographers of very different styles. O.P. is just the most well known of the modern magazines to fall prey of the advertising dollar to keep itsself a float, most of the others have gone the way of the dodo into extinction, and it certainly has become more difficult to view good pictures because of thier demise.

[paul_robins]

Outdoor Photographer is a pathetic excuse for a magazine. Having

subscribed to it for over 4 years I shake my head every time I read

it. Upon first glance, I am excied to see it at the mailbox but after

actually reading it I have a hollow feeling, like I just wasted an

hour of my life. As a hardcore outdoor photographer I find the mag way

too superficial. Where is the controversy? Where is the debate? Also:

 

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� Rob Sheppard is a joke of a photographer! I have yet to see an image

of his in the mag that wouldn't have been hurtled at a thousand miles

an hour into my round file.

 

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� The product reviews are pathetic. I'd rather read pop photography

for their more scientific lens tests.

 

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� The Advertorial aspects of the mag make me want to gag! Is it just

coincidence that a favorable review of a product sits side by side to

a full page ad for that product?

 

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I swear I will not renew my subscription when it's up.

[paal_jensen1]

There are several ways of doing business; one way is to find a niche

in the market and fill it for your own profit. Another approach is to

do something because you love it. The latter category usually makes a

good product. Unfortunately, OP is in the former category. Of corse,

everybody is in it for the money, but you can usually tell whether a

product is made out of love and genuine interest or for profit only.

 

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Apart from the advertorial stuff, the market strategy for OP is using

some hot names to sell the product; very much the same theme as seen

in various advertisements in the photo industry. Ie. I'm using brand

X, so you better do too (eg. current mamiya advertisements). OP have

bought a handful of big names. This helps them sell the magazine. The

photographers will be even more known and sell more pictures. Throw in

some advertorials and everyone is happy except for the consumer.

[jeff_thompson]

GEEZE-Lighten up a little. O.P. is cheap and it sure helped foster

my intrest in photography. Several of the lessons I learned there,

now seem so basic now. I have a good memmory, but it is awfully

short, and O.P.'s "simplistic" articles are a nice review during

those long winter nights. Some of the comments above have at least

been partially addressed-they no longer run ads from those bait and

switch shops so familiar to those of us who read this area of

photo.net regularly. They provide a service, and I will continue to

subsribe, not to see which product is promoted by who,but as an

inexpensive resource to aid my passion. I don't own only a single

lens, nor do I rely on a single source, to enhance my photography.

Jeff