Lightmancer
Legend
- Location
- Sunny Frimley
- Name
- Bill Palmer
I have picked up a copy of AP almost every week for the past 25 years. Let's just work that out, for a moment. It is published 51 weeks a year, and I usually miss a copy during the Summer hols, so say 50. Today's cover price is £2.95, so let's split the difference for fun, and call it £1.50 a copy on average over that time. From top to bottom it measures roughly 12 inches.
So, in the past 25 years, I have bought one thousand two hundred and fifty copies. If they were laid end to end they would stretch for about a quarter of a mile. They are about 1/6 of an inch thick, so if stacked the pile would stand about seventeen feet high. At £1.50 a copy I have invested one thousand eight hundred and seventy five pounds.
I've bought cars for less.
I've had bloody good holidays for less.
I could buy a lot of camera with £1875...
So let's consider content, and value. Photography has changed radically in the past twenty five years and the content of AP has likewise changed, albeit sometimes struggling to keep pace with developments. Today's magazine is nothing like the one printed in the same week in 1989. It has not just changed in subject matter, however, but in content and in editorial tone. In trying to tap into the photographic zeitgeist it is shallow and almost staccato in its treatment of topics. The contributor and editorial expertise that was evident in the past is there no longer. In spite of claiming independence, it reads increasingly like advertorial. Crucially it offers no greater depth of insight than can be found upon the internet; indeed it's own website effectively cannibalises it's own printed version. It no longer speaks to me, partly because I am not the photographer I was in 1989, but mostly because it is today a shadow of it's former self in detail, utility and integrity. I buy it, read it within the hour, and bin it.
No more. Last week was the last I shall buy. There is a part of me that is sad, but one cannot be sentimental about these things; I have been buying from habit rather than anything else. In future the only photographic magazine I will be buying on a regular basis is "Black and White". i still class myself as an amateur, but not one that finds any value in the pages of AP today.
So, in the past 25 years, I have bought one thousand two hundred and fifty copies. If they were laid end to end they would stretch for about a quarter of a mile. They are about 1/6 of an inch thick, so if stacked the pile would stand about seventeen feet high. At £1.50 a copy I have invested one thousand eight hundred and seventy five pounds.
I've bought cars for less.
I've had bloody good holidays for less.
I could buy a lot of camera with £1875...
So let's consider content, and value. Photography has changed radically in the past twenty five years and the content of AP has likewise changed, albeit sometimes struggling to keep pace with developments. Today's magazine is nothing like the one printed in the same week in 1989. It has not just changed in subject matter, however, but in content and in editorial tone. In trying to tap into the photographic zeitgeist it is shallow and almost staccato in its treatment of topics. The contributor and editorial expertise that was evident in the past is there no longer. In spite of claiming independence, it reads increasingly like advertorial. Crucially it offers no greater depth of insight than can be found upon the internet; indeed it's own website effectively cannibalises it's own printed version. It no longer speaks to me, partly because I am not the photographer I was in 1989, but mostly because it is today a shadow of it's former self in detail, utility and integrity. I buy it, read it within the hour, and bin it.
No more. Last week was the last I shall buy. There is a part of me that is sad, but one cannot be sentimental about these things; I have been buying from habit rather than anything else. In future the only photographic magazine I will be buying on a regular basis is "Black and White". i still class myself as an amateur, but not one that finds any value in the pages of AP today.