Practical Photography 50th Issue

Mangelwurzel

Mangelwurzel

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I'm sure alot of us have picked up PP's 50 year anniversary issue this week. What an interesting read!

For anyone yet to see it they show many comparisons of how photography has changed between 1959 and 2009.
I love the old articles about suggesting going to the beach to get photographs of children playing on the beach - oh how times have changed :shake:

Also shows alot of covers from previous decades in a more liberal age where the reaction of nudity was artistic not pornographic - the Ed comments about how many complaints he might get if he ran covers like that these days :lol:

I often wonder if i was born fifty years too late.
 
I know what you mean mate.
I was born in 1956 and started taking photos in the mid 60's.
In those days the mag Amateur Photographer was regarded as a porn mag
and could be found under many a schoolboys bed.
The publishing industry really hasn't helped the serious photographer in losing the tag of pervert with the crap that they gave us like Camera Weekly which was just a poor excuse for a soft porn mag in my opinion.
Practical Photography has survived so long because it has always tried to be above all the others and in many ways it has achieved that.
 
Paul_UK said:
I know what you mean mate.
I was born in 1956 and started taking photos in the mid 60's.
In those days the mag Amateur Photographer was regarded as a porn mag
and could be found under many a schoolboys bed.
The publishing industry really hasn't helped the serious photographer in losing the tag of pervert with the crap that they gave us like Camera Weekly which was just a poor excuse for a soft porn mag in my opinion.
Practical Photography has survived so long because it has always tried to be above all the others and in many ways it has achieved that.
Click to expand...

:lol: I've got to agree with you mate.

I first came across camera magazines as a youngster in the late 70's and when I actually became interested in photography in the 80's there wasn't a camera magazine I felt comfortable about going into a newsagents and buying...Like you say they were basically porn mags in another cover.
My interest wained because of lack of teaching information available.

I think there was a massive stigma attached to photographers back then...My early childhood impression was that photography was a slightly seedy activity and of course it was only because of the publications that were around at the time.

It's quite refreshing now to find that photography publications have moved on and I bet there is a whole generation of young photograhers blissfully unaware of the way things were.
 
nuts/zoo are less than that now......

Not that they are porn, errrr I mean I think from the the suggestive covers they have ladies in them and I think they are less than 2.30, not that I have ever bought or read such a magazine............

(phew, think got away with that)
 
Even in the early 90's PP put glamour models on the front cover of every issue. I remember someone wrote in to complain that it was sexist - the reply was that the magazine wouldn't sell without the models on the front cover.

How times change (for the better in this case) :)

A.
 
I couldnt believe the nude model in this mag didnt know they could put that sort of thing in there. :naughty:
 
Anorakus said:
Even in the early 90's PP put glamour models on the front cover of every issue. I remember someone wrote in to complain that it was sexist - the reply was that the magazine wouldn't sell without the models on the front cover.

How times change (for the better in this case) :)

A.
Click to expand...

For the better? In 1990, Practical Photography sold over 120,000 copies per month. It was the biggest selling photo magazine in Europe. Today, it is less than half that (56,000 certified circulation).
 
I prefer the new style, I never would have brought the older cover versions. In the current market 56,000 sounds a good circulation. Some magazines still have the model of the month covers, T3 springs to mind.
 
rookx said:
I prefer the new style, I never would have brought the older cover versions. In the current market 56,000 sounds a good circulation. Some magazines still have the model of the month covers, T3 springs to mind.
Click to expand...

There are about 3 times more camera magazines available since the dawn of the digital age, so with so much choice 56,000 does sound a decent amount.
Also, almost everything you need to know available online nowadays.
 
Anorakus said:
Even in the early 90's PP put glamour models on the front cover of every issue. I remember someone wrote in to complain that it was sexist - the reply was that the magazine wouldn't sell without the models on the front cover.

How times change (for the better in this case) :)


A.
Click to expand...

I seem to recall in PP that there were some dodgy ads for "glamour models" in the personal colums at the tail end of the mag.
 
Busby said:
There are about 3 times more camera magazines available since the dawn of the digital age, so with so much choice 56,000 does sound a decent amount.
Also, almost everything you need to know available online nowadays.
Click to expand...

56,000 is a good figure for PP, all things considered. It is second only to Digital Photo, its sister mag, which sells 68,000. These two magazines lead the market by a big margin.

I'm not sure there are any more photo magazines about now than in the past. There were ten consumer titles published around 1990, two were weekly and Amateur Photographer sold over 100,000 copies per week. It is now down to 22,000, and of course Camera Weekly shut up shop a long time ago. And those dodgy model ads, they are still there in the back of Practical!

The big change is the internet, and websites like this, that have slashed magazine sales. And hobbyist subjects, like photography, have been hit especially hard. I still enjoy reading magazines though - you seem to get a better overview of what's worth knowing about. The internet is great, but there is just so much unedited info out there you don't know what to believe!
 
In those days, 35mm cameras were known as "miniature cameras".
I get my mags free from work, but only if we are running an advert in that particular issue.
 
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