The latest National Geographic came in the mail today. I find it a little ironic that a magazine that's had such a strong bent toward showcasing the effects of global warming is printed on dead trees and trucked around the world to be delivered into our mailboxes, but whatever...
When I get a fresh new NG, I have a ritual I follow.
- act all giddy and excited, like a kid with a new present
- carefully peel the brown wrapper off, so as to not rip the precious cargo inside. mention a little louder than is necessary that it's a National Geographic, so any observers don't get any ideas about what kind of magazine I'm subscribing to that requires a brown wrapper...
- inhale. deeply. pause. aaaaaaaaaahhhh... the ink smell, mixed with the off-gassing paper. so, that's why they kill trees and ship this stuff around the planet...
- peruse the cover. always an awesome photograph. try to figure out where the photo was taken. if feeling really geeky, try to figure out how they got the shot. if feeling really cocky, try to figure out if I could have gotten that shot. wonder what it would be like to work on a NG shoot...
- scan the topics listed on the cover. the ones obscuring the photograph.
- take 10-30 seconds to scan the table of contents. get an idea of what's inside.
- flip past the Cialis/Levitra/Ensomnublis/Viagra/Erectomax ads that fill the first section of the magazine with multiple full-page spreads. gee, I wonder what the prime demographic for this magazine is...
- examine every single page, looking only at the photographs. repeat step 4 for each photograph. this will take an hour or two. wonder what the hell they were thinking when selecting at least 3 photos that should have been marked as "Reject" in Aperture. (the motion-blurred flying birds with blurry ice field in the background is the prime candidate this time around - they were trying to be artistic. it would have worked, had the pan managed to get the bird in sharp focus, but it didn't...) The polar bear shaking off water is one of the best catches of this issue. wow. Knowing that the bear charged the photographer seconds after the shot was taken just makes it so much better. Some of the wide-angle shots of meltwater reservoirs on top of the ice are pretty amazing, too.
- if any articles look really interesting, go back and read them.
- wonder why NG isn't just a photo magazine. by FAR the best part of the magazine. the articles are great, too, but they take up paper that would be better allocated to more photos...
- come back to the issue several times over the next month, slowly working through all articles, letters, sidebars. revisiting every photograph. wondering how freaking cool it would be to work on a NG shoot.
- put the magazine away for "safe keeping" never to open it again once the next one comes in.
As much as I love NG, I really think I'd prefer an online-only subscription. With access to high-resolution photographs and galleries, I'd be more than satisified. And it would save countless trees, prevent tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, conserve fossil fuels, etc...