Post 24

When I first became interested in photography, I went on the prowl for a good photography magazine. At first, I considered magazines such as "Aperture," that have amazing photos in each publication, but I decided to go for something that also had content that I could learn from. I decided to go with "Popular Photography." "Popular Photography" doesn't have as many jaw dropping images that magazines such as "Aperture" have, but "Popular Photography" posses articles that could, and still do, help me grow as a photographer and teach me a few valuable things. My mom has a subscription to "Popular Photography," so I was already somewhat familiar with the publication. I received my first issue in the mail in July of 2011, and its articles have helped me in different ways, and the reviews help me decide what I should consider and what I shouldn't. The only downside of the reviews are that sometimes the reviews are aimed towards equipment or cameras that I wouldn't even consider, such as point and shoots, and other "novice" like equipment, but that's what happens when a publication tries to appeal to a wide audience. The biggest, and most noticeable and annoying, downside of the publication though, is the amount of advertisements in the magazine.

For those of you who don't know, advertisements are how magazines and newspapers make their money. The subscriptions basically cover the shipping costs of the publication.

Now, I'm all for a decent publication like "Popular Photography" doing whatever it takes to continue surviving in order to provide information to it's readers, but after noticing that I could easily read everything in "Popular Photography" cover to cover in less time than it takes me to eat a meal, I decided to count how many of the pages contained an advertisement in the most recent issue I received. I counted 57 pages out of 112, or 51%, of the magazine's pages either have ads on them, or are entirely ads.The pages that contain ads, and aren't completely an advertisement, are sometimes the majority of the page, with less than 20% of a page with an ad actually being content from a writer of the magazine. I can't help but find this a little ridiculous. Does "Popular Photography" really need these many advertisements in their publication in order to continue making their magazine? I would hope so. Because I would hope that if they didn't, they would make the right choice by having as little advertisements as possible in order to provide more content, or at the very least make the magazine more enjoyable to their readers.