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I get very cynical in photography magazines.

Their content seems to revolve around mastering some skill inside 3 pages. Master landscapes. Master long exposures. Master masks. And so on.

And there little to zero differentiation between photography magazines in terms of content.

So trapped by a bad British winter and mid-buying a house I scoured the net in search of  decent photography based reading.

And lo two were discovered. And they were good.

Outdoor Photographer

Simply the best photography magazine for landscape or nature photographers I’ve come across.

Photography and photoshop techniques tend to be more advanced. Cloning with color or luminosity masks, the zone system for digital are some recent articles.

I don’t mean to be snobbish, those “basic” articles in Photography-everything-monthly have their place. There just seems to be little or nowhere for photographers to grow into once they reach a certain level of understanding — least not in the commercially published arena.

Regular columns and contributors cover philosophy and photographic approach in and amongst staple topics on equipment, and with heavyweight contributions from Art Wolfe and David Muench there’s always a insight to be gleaned from this magazine.

The Big Picture

Not a magazine technically, rather a stream of consciousness photo-blog.

Inspired by publications like Life Magazine (of old), National Geographic, The Big Picture focuses on current events, lesser-known stories and, well, just about any topics floating around the global newswire.

No politics though, everything is expressed in images with captions.

3 times a week themes are picked from water scarcity, a current war, to Kim Jong il. Whatever is current or topical in the global media, and the photography is world class. A cut above.

The huge diversity of topics brings together many styles of photography as well, landscape, macro, photo-journalism, reportage, portrait and on and on.

Sure there’s no articles to learn from, but just having so many images in one place to digest can’t help but influence upon  your own personal style and open your eyes. And so much diverse genre eye-candy condensed into one easy to consume site is a rarity.

I’m sure there’s more, and i’m going to keep on scouring. Any suggestions, please send them my way.

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Recently finished David Ward’s Landscape Beyond: A Journey into photography, which I can’t recommend more highly.

Most photography books focus on the how, in-camera technique, exposure etc. Not this one, in fact David Ward barely mentions any technical aspect in this devotion to the making of landscape images.

David Ward | Landscape Beyond

In Landscape Beyond, Ward talks about the making of landscape images using the creation of mystery and the incongruity to enrich images and captivate viewers. His technique, if indeed Ward is trying to teach one, is to question of your approach and aims, to look for mystery and simplicity in the landscape to document in order to create more novel and unique images.

Throughout his discussion Ward seamlessly, and eloquently, moves between references to philosophy, art history, quotes from past photographic masters, and his own philosophy without pretention or confusing the reader. He’s clearly a learned fellow.

The key outake of Landscape Beyond is thinking. About what you shoot, your choice of locations, how you behave on location, the why of your images, and how to make better images when in the field by changing the way you look at the landscape. I found it challenged some of my own thoughts and practices, giving my plenty of food for thought next time I head out the door.

The net result will mean shooting less, but with more in depth analysis of what’s in front of you, at least for me. But I don’t see that as negative, far from it. Reading this has I hoped altered my approach and should make for more emotive, evocative and unique images over the coming year — I hope.

Check out more of David Ward’s work.

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