Customer Rating: 
Summary: OP (Outdoor Photographer)
Comment: This magazine offers a complete guide to shooting anything that takes me outdoors.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Well...
Comment: You know, somehow I ended up with a free subscription to this magazine, and although I've been getting it for months it hasn't made much of an impression.
It's more balanced between gear and technique than say Popular Photography. However, I'm sitting here trying to conjure up an interesting article from memory, and I'm getting nothing.
Outdoor photography is difficult from an artistic standpoint, but from a technique standpoint there's just not all that much to know. Put your camera on a tripod when you can. Worry about Lens flare. Autofocus is good for rapidly moving animals. Wait for the light. Experiment with fill flash until you find a level that you like. Ho hum. You're not going to find any tips in this magazine on how to bring out the highlights of a B&W photo with farmer's reducer, or anything like that. It's all on the blur-the-waterfall-with-a-slow-shutterspeed kind of level.
Anyways, a beginner might like it for a year or two, so I've given it 3 stars.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Very unbalanced coverage!
Comment: If you want a generalized photography magazine that covers protraiture, product, glamour, or wedding/events photo techniques...read the cover before you buy this magazine. If you want a fine instructional magazine devoted to outdoor and travel photography, there may not be a better one in print. Filled with beautiful photos that, more often than not, have details about equipment/settings used to make them and where they were taken. I've been a subscriber for years and will continue.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A How-To Magazine for Creating Cliches
Comment: The typical photo magazine aimed at amateurs is 90% about equipment and 10% about art. And that's a very sucessful formula, as most amateur "photographers" are really equipment junkies and not artists.Outdoor Photographer is more like 50:50 gear and technique. There's still a lot of equipment writing- which tripod, which lens and so forth- but a significant amount of editorial space is devoted to technique as well. Unfortunately most of it is about creating the same stale and hackneyed nature photos that fill the pages of this and other magazines: Heavily filtered, over saturated color images of senic vistas that make for nice posters but say very little about the subject. In some sense the notion of there being an "outdoor" genre of photography is rather silly; can you imagine a magazine called "Indoor Photography"? Good photographers are good photographers, and can see images wherever they are- and with whatever equipment they use. For every Ansel Adams who obsesses over technique there's a Cartier-Bresson, who couldn't be troubled to get his exposures quite right, and truth be told, Cartier-Bresson was the better of the two when it came to art.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Best Magazine Dedicated to Outdoor Photography
Comment: Outdoor Photographer is the essential how-to and where-to magazine for the outdoor photographer. I would recommend it for all levels of photographic skill, although most discussions of technique are suited to intermediate to advanced skill levels. There is only occasional discussion of the most basic techniques, as would benefit beginners. There are, however, so many great ideas on where and what to photograph that I think beginners can get a lot out of the magazine as well. And you won't be a beginner for long. The "outdoor" in the title does not refer exclusively to nature photography. Most of the magazine is dedicated to nature photography,but there are frequent articles on travel, location, and other sorts of outdoor photography, as well.
In Outdoor Photographer you will find how-to articles on lighting, exposure, filters, gear, preparing yourself and your gear for the elements -be they arctic cold or rain forest heat and humidity, along with some advice specifically for digital cameras and the digital darkroom. And you will find this information for everything from close-up to landscape photography. Outdoor photographer focuses primarily on 35 mm and digital photography, with an occasional article on medium format. The discussions of exposure, lighting and locations are applicable to all formats of photography, however. And there is George Lepp's monthly question and answer column for those questions on just about any photographic or digital imaging subject that are not answered elsewhere.
And now for the best part. Outdoor Photographer tells you where to get great outdoor photographs. "Favorite Places" is a one-page feature in every issue that tells you about a great place in the United States to photograph, what there is to see, and what time of the year is best. Be sure to save those in case you ever have the time and means to visit them all. In addition to "Favorite Places" there are featured articles in every issue that detail a place to photograph, how to get there, what to take, what to photograph, etc., frequently written by well-known nature photographers and accompanied by some of their terrific photographs. I counted 3 such articles in the last issue of OP that I received. If you are a photographer or hobbiest who is able to travel a lot, Outdoor Photographer is a terrific bargain just for the locations. And if you don't travel much, it will help you photograph your backyard and local parks and gardens well.
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