Do surf magazines still matter?

I’ve been asking myself this question for the last few months. It’s probably my growing older and wondering if kids these days think the same as I did. When I first had a dream to get a photo published, magazines were everything. Everything I would work for and spend money and time on was for them. They had a staff of editors and photographers who were highly respected. I worshiped everything Flame and Evan Slater did. I listened to Steve Sherman’s photographs. I would bug Jason Murray with emails weekly. I ignored Chris Mauro.

But here’s a simple fact that will show you how important magazines were back then: every photographer shot on E-6 slide film. And there was only one copy of that image. For example, as a freelancer, I would send an image to Surfer Magazine and they would hold onto it for weeks or months before deciding to run it. If it got sent back, you’d send it to another magazine and hope they would run it. Flame [Surfing Magazine’s late and legendary photo editor and current guiding light] was notorious for holding onto images but never running them. It was called “Flame’s Vault.” But could you blame him? He had the power. Magazines had the power. They had the only copy of your best image and they could run it whenever they wanted to; knowing that no other magazine had that image. But no one complained. That was how it was and you gave everything to the magazine.

Let’s compare that to today’s current scene.

It seems photographers who are starting out care more about their personal Instagram than getting a photo published in a magazine. Kids who were once interns are now Editor-in-Chief. I even see staff photographers posting photos on their personal account before the magazine posts it on theirs. And that leads me to this: Instant gratification. A surf trip now has to be instant. And there’s two problems with that: Magazines can’t be instant. And documenting surfing is not meant to be instant. Just today I scored really good waves at a beach-break that doesn’t get good that often. Thanks, @theroadsoda for posting a photo of the lineup last night.

There’s always been a fine line for blowing spots out. And I can’t talk because I’ve blown out more than my share of lineups. But it took years for people to find those waves, not minutes. I would come home from a trip to a new wave in Indo or Oregon or Morocco and none of the images would go online. It was all for print. That’s what the driving force was. That’s what my life was centered around. The slow process didn’t bother me because surf magazines were everlasting.

But it’s not all bad these days. Some people are getting it. There’s no more news in magazines anymore — it’s now timeless content that hopefully we can pick up in 10 years and flick through and see how rad 2015 was. And I’m confident that the young kids starting out will put their stardom on the back burner and work for making magazines the star again. If Quinn can do it, you all can.

Bless,

Nate Lawrence