SMP's Gala First Anniversary
by Mike Johnston
Home : Sunday Morning Photographer
Good morning! Today marks the first anniversary of the publication of "The Sunday
Morning Photographer" on the Web. This is the 45th column [Editor's note: only
the last 8 columns have appeared on photo.net], which means I only missed eight
Sundays during the past year. Considering I do this for yuks, that ain't such a bad
record.
I started writing this column for two reasons. First, because it frustrated me to spent
a lot of time writing long, involved e-mails that only one person or a few people got to
see; and second, to keep myself working.
A former co-worker of mine at the last magazine I worked for was the unintended
inspiration. What happened was that after the publisher of that magazine established a
website, this co-worker went around complaining loudly and bitterly that he wanted to
write a monthly column on the website but hadn't been invited to write for it at all.
Thinking I was doing him a favor (silly me), I interceded on his behalf, and discovered
that the webmaster would, in fact, welcome a column from him.
When I took this news to him, I expected that he'd be happy about it. But no. It turned
out he didn't actually want to write a column — I guess he just wanted to know
that it was an option for him. Or maybe he wanted to be asked, so he could turn it down. I
don't know. At any rate, what he said at the end of that conversation has stuck in my head
like a bad pop tune ever since: "Besides," he said as I left his office,
"I'm not sure I want to fill up an entire page every month. I'd have to come up with
enough things to say. That's a lot of work. I'd need more money."
An entire page every single month ?!? And that same guy, if you can
believe this, had ambitions to be a sportswriter!! Heck, Jay Mariotti (hardworkin'
sportswriter for the Chicago Sun-Times ) does more writing work in any given week
than my unnamed former co-worker did from year to year.
I decided I just really didn't want to be like that guy. Writers write. I don't mind
work.
One Year and Counting
"The Sunday Morning Photographer" had modest beginnings. It started out to be
just a few brief paragraphs that my friend Michael Reichmann of luminous-landscape.com
kindly agreed to put up on his site every week. The first column, published on March 31st,
2002, got a few hundred hits and some nice e-mail responses. I thought that was great! At
the time, my resolution was to see if I could keep it going for a whole year.
Since then, "The Sunday Morning Photographer" has become, more often than
not, a full-blown weekly article-length piece. And its audience has grown and grown. It
was picked up in June of 2002 by Steve Sanders, whose steves-digicams.com is one of the
four major digital photography review sites in the world. Steve's Digicam's has logged
more than 107 million hits since its inception, a truly remarkable number in the
little world of enthusiast photography. Only a small percentage see SMP, but it's still an
impressive number.
Next, it started being translated into Polish by my friend Lukasz Kacperczyk of
fotopolis.pl, the leading photography website in Poland. Friends and acquaintances who
speak Polish (I don't, unfortunately) as well as English have assured me that Lukasz's
translations are expertly done, and SMP has gradually gained in popularity to become a
solid attraction on Fotopolis.
Finally, thanks to the perseverance of Bob Atkins, beginning with the SMP column
"Collecting Photography Books" SMP began appearing on photo.net, one of the
oldest and largest photography sites on the Web. Judging from the enthusiastic reception
it's received there so far, it will only grow in popularity as more and more photo.net
regulars discover it.
Unlike the situation with print magazines, each site retains a complete archive of the
past columns it has published. The most complete archive is on luminous-landscape.com,
naturally, but the archive at steves-digicams.com is growing, and of course photo.net and
fotopolis.pl will also archive all the columns published on those sites.
All in all, SMP is now read every week by a minimum (in hard documented hits) of 25,000
photographers, and the actual readership might well be twice that. If you're reading this,
thanks!
The 37th Frame
There has been one apparent casualty, however. Two years ago, I began a print
newsletter called The 37th Frame that quickly established a following. And since
I've been writing SMP every week, the total number of issues of the newsletter that I've
published has been...er, none. Oops.
That's about to change. Issue #4 of the newsletter has now been printed, and copies are
being mailed out to subscribers slowly as the mailing list is "groomed." If you
haven't already gotten yours, you will soon. As I say in the newsletter itself, thanks for
your patience — not that you've had any choice in the matter.
Issue #4 contains one of my characteristic riffs about the meaning of photography, what
I often refer to as the "why-to" as opposed to the omnipresent
"how-to." Called "Books, Records, and Photographs," it's a meditation
about the peculiar characteristics that these three "recording media" have in
common. There's also has a review of the Nikon FM3a, by Stephen Gandy, and a review of the
Nikkor 45mm Ÿ/2.8P; regular features such as Abberzee and Coates, the Rant, and the
Cheap Crap Award; my rather acerbic commentary on recent tidbits from the news, and the
usual Subscriber Notes, sprinkled overall with the usual skewering asides.
Issue #5 will be the best one yet, I think. It contains as its centerpiece a new
perspective on Ansel Adams by a British writer, and one of my best (worst?) rants yet. If
you're easily offended by inventive scorn, you have been warned. (Just so you know, I
almost always make nice in SMP, whereas my grumpy, curmudgeonly side* is reserved for the
newsletter.)
(*One of my friends reading this sentence loudly exclaimed, "You mean it's only a side?!?")
Issue #6, as originally promised, will contain Part Two of the "35mm Prime Lens
Reviews" begun in Issue #3. I'm still trying new lenses for this feature, as
I'm able to wring them out of the hands of their makers. (The way things are going, there
may have to be a Part Three.) And I've still yet to get around to the 50mm Prime Lens
Reviews, and the long-promised feature about the world's best lenses for portraiture.
In any event, the publication schedule for The 37th Frame has been
rationalized. Four issues will be published in 2003 if it kills me. And I really
hope this statement doesn't come back to haunt me in December.
The Book, boss, the Book!
As if that weren't all for 2003, I'm still hoping my book will be published. The
finished book project, called The Empirical Photographer , has been joined by a
second full-scale book project. Who knows? With any luck, there will be not one but two
photography titles by yours truly in bookstores by next Christmas. Hey, I might as well be
optimistic.
The Big Question
The big question, of course, is whether it's worth it to keep The Sunday Morning
Photographer going for another year. The initial plan was to publish it for a single year
— a year which is now over.
The bottom line, unfortunately, is...well, the bottom line. I don't get paid for this.
So if you like the Web version, drop me a thank-you note in the way of a newsletter
subscription, would ya? If you already subscribe, just tell one friend. It's not the least
you can do, it's the most you can do, but still, I'd appreciate it.
Until further notice, I'm gonna give Anniversary Number Two a shot. Not, however, at
the continuing expense of The 37th Frame, or my book projects. In the coming
year, the newsletter will take precedence over the web column instead of the other way
around. So if you tune in some Sunday this coming year and don't find a column, take heart
— it's because I'm off industriously scribbling something else for you.
Seriously, thanks for reading. And thanks to my publishers, Michael Reichmann, Steve
Sanders, Lukasz Kacperczyk, and Bob Atkins. It's been a good year. I'll be back next week
with more, same time, same place, same channel.
With best regards,
Mike Johnston
Do you enjoy reading "The Sunday Morning Photographer"? If you want to
support it, please click this link. http://www.37thframe.com/supportindependentpublishing.htm
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