The Terra Galleria Blog – QT Luong

It is rare for a military school to be one of the most elite institutions of higher learning in its country, but such is the case of France’s Ecole Polytechnique. As a student with modest means, I appreciated the status of paid officer cadet very much. Using my newly-received salary, the first major purchase I made was the first autofocus SLR camera, which had just been released. I was far from being aware of it back then – my copy is from eBay, but this time nearly coincided with the release of the premier issue of Outdoor Photographer Magazine in June 1985.

Although not a cover photograph, the main feature of that issue was a nine-page interview with Galen Rowell by Steve Werner. Werner, the magazine’s founder, viewed Rowell as an archetype of his target reader, “a fairly even blend of outdoorsman and photographic artist”. Even though, with his exceptional abilities, Rowell couldn’t really be representative of the average reader, he could be the person they aspired to be. A few years later, my engagement with the mountains and with photography had deepened. Few in France had heard of Rowell. However, a new colleague had freshly arrived from North America to take a position in the lab near Cannes in the French Riviera where I was doing my graduate research. When he showed me Mountain Light, I instantly realized that photographs of mountains could be elevated to an art form. I, too aspired to be Rowell as he became my first role model and shadow mentor in photography and in adventure.

In February of 1993, the now-closed bookstore Black Oak Books on Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley, California held an author event for Galen Rowell, on the occasion of the release of Galen Rowell’s Vision. I had just taken residence in an apartment a few blocks away and learned by chance of the event, from which the signature on my copy dates. The new book consisted of a collection of columns that Galen had previously written for Outdoor Photographer. Barbara Rowell had lamented that magazine publishers tended to take advantage of Galen’s reputation in their first issues before dropping the relationship, but Steve Warner did not make that mistake. Instead, the magazine largely gave free rein to Galen for his column “Photo Adventure”. It was a win for both, as Galen envisioned it from the start as building blocks for a book, while he turned out to be one of the most popular contributors to the magazine. Outdoor Photographer thrived on much of the innovations that were instrumental to Galen’s success: the refinement of the 35mm SLR camera, the emergence of modern outdoor gear, the growth of ecotourism and adventure travel.

Galen was the contributor that got me reading Outdoor Photographer, but he wasn’t the only columnist of distinction. Outstanding regular essayists included luminaries such as Dewitt Jones, Frans Lanting, William Neill and many others from all the disciplines of nature, travel, and adventure photography. Any favorite writers? Bill was particularly influential to me in the late 1990s because his meditative approach provided a counterpoint to Galen’s hyper-active operating mode, and also because he used the tool I was gravitating towards, the large format camera. Recently, he even repeated Galen’s publication model by releasing his inspiring book Light on the Landscape, based on more than 140 columns he wrote in Outdoor Photographer since 1997. The magazine’s editors gave those photographers a forum to write whatever they wanted from the heart, and in turn their excellence made the magazine consistently worth reading. More generally, Outdoor Photographer became the premier photo publication with a focus on the natural world because its contributors were among the most celebrated names in the field.

I therefore felt extremely honored when the magazine published a profile about my work in 2013 and in subsequent years invited me to contribute several major features, often for their summer issue focussed on national parks. The last one, in the June/July 2023 issue, entitled “Top 10 Less-Crowded National Parks” (not my own choice of title), extends for thirty-two pages, representing exactly one-third of the issue’s total number of pages – the longest article I’ve seen in the history of the magazine. Read most of it here. More than half of the images was photographed on 5×7 film. Although summer is my least-favorite season to travel to the parks, the color palette of the images is dominated by greens because it is a summer issue for which I knew not to submit images obviously from other seasons. I am pleased for find myself in the company of the other contributors: William Neill, Amy Gulick, Josh Miller (Yosemite is popular!), Glenn Randall, Eric Bennett, Dave Welling (cover image), and Jason Bradley. This publication is special because, sadly, it is the final issue of Outdoor Photographer. If you have a copy, keep it because it may become a collectible one day! Correct me if I am wrong, but I think Outdoor Photographer was the last (almost) monthly photography magazine in the U.S.

Why is Outdoor Photographer ceasing publication? Much of traditional media has been in decline for years because of the Internet. Companies have decided that electronic advertising options are more promising. There are fewer people willing to pay for high-quality content when there is so much out there for free, even if the quality is a mixed bag. Younger photography enthusiasts who live on the phone do not care for print media. The high point of Outdoor Photographer‘s arc was probably in the 2000s, but by the end of that decade, social media, launched in the mid-2000s and combined with digital photography had decisively changed the Internet and photographic practice. Looking at the issues of the past few years, it was clear that the contents has thinned and the printing quality declined compared to the heydays.

Several excellent digital photography publications more specialized than Outdoor Photographer prosper because they don’t have to depend on the costly logistical challenges of printing and distributing the issues, which alleviates the need for advertising revenue. However, they are not the same as a printed magazine much the same way as a web gallery is a poor substitute for a photography book. Moreover, those younger publications have not yet reached the iconic status of well-established magazines. Back in the 2000s, there were other magazines in the same niche, but Outdoor Photographer was the best of them. As I prepare to move into a new phase, Outdoor Photographer‘s 38-year run spanned the entirety of my career in nature photography.

It is always sad to see the end of an era, but change is inevitable. Accelerating the trend, conglomerates identify distressed media assets, scoop them up to extracting whatever value is left, and kill the rest. Recent years have seen the demise of many influential U.S. publications (U.K.’s seem more resilient), although some survive as websites. They include Popular Photography which lasted 80 years and had at its peak a circulation of a million, Photo District News, the magazine of reference of professional photographers, American Photo, Rangefinder, and Shutterbug. Correct me if I am wrong, but think that <Outdoor Photographer was the last monthly printed photography magazine in the U.S. The magazine had already gone bankrupt in 2015 when it was subsequently sold by Werner Publishing to Madavor Media.

Outdoor Photographer ran again into serious cash flow issues in the second half of 2022 and incurred significant debt, after Madavor was hit with paper shortages and the printer demanded double the contracted price. Again, an acquisition occurred, by the BeBop Channel Corporation in February 2023. Curiously, the new parent company’s revenue is only a small fraction of Madavor Media. With their focus residing on performing arts such as Jazz, dance, and theatre, they appear to have been interested mostly in Madavor Media’s iconic JazzTimes. This erratic move was quickly followed by others. Per their latest media kit, Outdoor Photographer reaches an audience of two million, including 168,000 magazine readers. Many publications are sustained by an order of magnitude fewer readers. Insiders say that Outdoor Photographer by itself was profitable, but dragged down by other Madavor publications. Yet in May, not even attempting to keep the website updated, BeBop laid off all the staff of Madavor Media’s photography publications. This was while they were negotiating the sale of the magazine. They then put up for sale as a $500,000 package not only the now-hollowed Outdoor Photographer, but also Digital Photo Pro, Digital Photo, Image Creators Network, and Imaging Resource. For a moment, it would seem that Giggster Inc, a company in the photography space, would buy all those properties, however, the sale fell through, and in June BeBop filled a lawsuit against Giggster Inc. for breach of contract and fraud.

Contributors were treated no better than staff and subscribers. Despite Bebop’s promises to take care of Madavor’s debt, more than a hundred freelancers remain unpaid. Not only BeBop’s CEO tries to shift the responsibility to the former owners Zilpin Group Inc, encouraging us to sue Zilpin instead of BeBop, he blamed us freelancers for continuing to contribute. Indeed, I was still waiting for an article I delivered in June 2022 to be paid. Yet, when Outdoor Photographer‘s new editor Dan Havlik invited me to contribute to the Summer 2023 issue, I did not hesitate to accept. For many of my magazine articles, I used the riskier publication model of serialization which is kind of the opposite of what Galen Rowell and William Neill did. I first published a book (Treasured Lands) and then extracted material from it for magazine articles. There are always changes and contextualizing to be done, but that’s much less time-consuming than writing an article from scratch. Working with the magazine for a decade with three different editors, I felt a sense of loyalty toward the publication. Having learned much from past issues, I liked an opportunity to pay it forward. Because of how respected the magazine was, I still saw providing articles as an honor.

My thirty-year relationship with Outdoor Photographer Magazine as a reader and then a contributor ends on a simultaneous low and high note. Although I have never worked for free and I am owed thousands of dollars, writing for the magazine was not mainly about money. A main feature in the final issue of the magazine whose premier issue opened with Galen Rowell? Priceless.