About Practical Photography

Practical Photography

Practical Photography was a British monthly photography magazine published for over sixty years, from March 1959 until the summer of 2020. It was created by East Midland Allied Press, the company known as EMAP, and in its later years was published by the Bauer Media Group, which acquired it from EMAP in 2008. True to its name, the magazine's mission never changed: it was a how-to-do-it magazine, devoted to making better photography skills accessible to everyone, from complete beginners to experienced enthusiasts.

At its launch the magazine billed itself as the British how-to-do-it photo magazine, and in its final issue, published in 2020, it looked back over what it called sixty-one years of inspiration, learning and photography. Few British specialist magazines of the postwar era kept so consistent a purpose for so long, through the whole journey of popular photography from film to digital.

Origins in Popular Photography and EMAP

Practical Photography was born in March 1959 from an older title, Popular Photography. It was published by East Midland Allied Press, EMAP, and sat in that company's portfolio alongside prestigious specialist titles such as Angling Times, Motorcycle News and Trout & Salmon. The first issue cost two shillings and sixpence, the equivalent, as the magazine itself later calculated, of about £2.62 in modern money.

The first issue promised to be the first step to a professional picture, and carried reviews of the latest film alongside its instruction. That formula, teach the reader to take better photographs, review the equipment honestly, and show inspiring work, defined the magazine from the outset. EMAP was one of the great British specialist magazine houses, and Practical Photography was its photography flagship for half a century.

The How-To Philosophy

The magazine's own retrospective, published in its final issue, summarised its approach: over the years it had moved with the times, trends and technology, but its aim had remained the same from day one, making better photography skills accessible to all. In practice that meant the magazine was built around teaching rather than merely showcasing. Its pages carried subject guides, camera and editing tutorials, interviews, questions and answers and product reviews, supplemented in its later years by how-to videos.

That philosophy distinguished it in the photography market. A Practical Photography reader was assumed to own a camera, or to be about to buy one, and to want to improve. The magazine met that reader at every level, publishing advice on technique, exhibiting and commenting on readers' own photographs, and profiling professional photographers whose work showed what was possible.

Regular Features and Camera School

Among the magazine's best-known features was Camera School, an annual camera skills course for beginners published in the magazine and supported by learning videos and homework tasks. Camera School had its own social media following and embodied the magazine's teaching mission in its purest form: a structured course, inside a monthly magazine, that took a new photographer step by step towards competence.

The magazine also ran a Photographer of the Year competition, held annually between January and July, in which readers could enter their own work. It maintained a sister magazine, Digital Photo, serving the digital side of the hobby as film declined. Regular writers in the magazine's later decades included the landscape photographer and writer David Noton, the fashion photographer David Lam, the semi-professional wildlife photographer Brian Matthews and the technique and composition specialist Chris Rutter, while Andrew James was among its editors before the final editorial team.

From Film to Digital

Practical Photography's sixty-one years spanned the largest technical revolution in photography's history. It began in a world of film, darkrooms and manual cameras; its January 1966 issue still carried the same how-to billing as the first. By its final decades it was teaching digital capture and image editing, reviewing digital cameras, explaining autofocus systems such as cross-type AF points in its technical features, and reaching readers through YouTube videos and social media as well as in print.

The magazine adapted to each change by holding its method constant: explain the technology in plain terms, show the reader how to use it, and judge equipment by what it did for the photographs. That continuity is why the title could serve readers who had learned on film in the 1960s and readers who had never loaded a roll, within the same editorial framework.

The Bauer Years

In 2008 the magazine passed from EMAP to the Bauer Media Group, when Bauer acquired EMAP's consumer magazine division. Under Bauer the magazine continued monthly, building a substantial life beyond the printed page. Its Practical Photography Talk Facebook group became a popular community, and its YouTube channel, Practical Photography Magazine, carried its video content to a wider audience.

The editorial team at the end reflected a modern multimedia magazine: group editor Ben Hawkins, deputy editor Chris Parker, features editor Adam Atkins, gear and technique editor Kirk Schwarz, senior art editor Chris Robinson, videographer Jake Kindred, production editor Marie Marsh and editorial assistant Beth Mackman. Earlier in the Bauer period the staff had included deputy editor Tim Berry, Photoshop editor Dan Mold, features writer Louise Carey and staff experts such as James Abbott, evidence of the magazine's twin emphasis on camera craft and digital editing.

The Final Issue

In 2020 Bauer took the decision, driven by the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, to close a group of its magazines, judging that Practical Photography, along with titles such as Simply You and Planet Rock, was unlikely to be sustainable after the crisis. Bauer's UK publishing chief executive Chris Duncan described them as tough decisions about the future of much-loved titles, taken to protect the long-term health of the publishing business.

The final issue was the August 2020 edition, which went on sale on 2 July 2020. It contained landscape photographer Justin Minns's East Anglian portfolio, the team's choice of their top ten favourite cameras, portrait styles to inspire readers and five ways to improve summer wildlife shots. Its retrospective feature, Parting Shot, marked the end with a history of the magazine's sixty-one years. Subscribers and readers were left with the magazine's website, practicalphotography.com, which thereafter redirected to What's The Best?, another Bauer Media property.

Readers and Community

A teaching magazine builds a particular kind of readership, and Practical Photography's readers were participants as much as consumers. The magazine exhibited and appraised their photographs, set them homework through Camera School, judged their entries in Photographer of the Year, and in its final decades talked with them daily in its Facebook group. When closure was announced, discussion among photography communities treated it as the loss of an institution rather than merely of a product, and its former editor turned up contributing appraisals to a surviving rival, Amateur Photographer.

That community dimension explains the magazine's longevity. Photography is a hobby in which equipment changes constantly but the desire to improve changes slowly, and a magazine trusted as a teacher could renew its readership with every generation of new camera buyers, from the film beginners of 1959 to the digital beginners of 2020.

Legacy

Practical Photography's legacy is measured in photographers rather than in publishing landmarks. Across sixty-one years and hundreds of monthly issues, it taught generations of British enthusiasts how to expose, compose, develop and later edit their pictures, reviewed the cameras and film they bought, and gave their work an audience.

Its history also mirrors that of British specialist magazine publishing itself: founded by EMAP in the great age of the hobby magazine, passed to an international group in Bauer, extended into video and social media, and finally closed, not because its subject had died, photography was more popular than ever, but because the economics of monthly print could no longer sustain it through a pandemic. The final issue's own verdict stands: sixty-one years of inspiration, learning and photography.