80’s WWF Photography/WWF Magazine
By Scott Keith on 1st September 2022
I just finished reading the History of the Heavyweight Championship rant and thought to myself that the last match on the video was eerily similar to the highlights shown on the video that appeared on my YouTube feed a day earlier…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgsfyMl7vvw&list=WL&index=107
This video follows Steve Taylor around in his role as director of photography for the WWF and you get a decent insight as to why all of their photos from this era were so vibrant and made the magazines instantly attractive and now insanely
collectible. Also you get a little bit of backstage stuff from 1987, including a promo from Hulk Hogan putting Taylor over, to which your rant pinpoints to the TV tapings on June 3rd.
I always wondered how they got that wicked flash effect going back in the day, Rick Rude’s dropkick photo from Wrestlemania 5 always sticks out as where it was really noticeable, but did leave unanswered what those little strobe lights
hanging from the roof were for.
Assume it was to give the impression camera flashes were going off in the crowd at the big events?
Also, did you ever collect the WWF Magazines or did you gravitate towards the Apter magazines to get the best of all worlds?
100 percent an Apter guy. They had the Lex Luger covers! Although it’s funny because now I have all these online friends who were WWF magazine writers back in the day and I always feel bad because I have no real nostalgia for those. Mad respect to freelance writers though, I have enough trouble coming up with my one column per month for Inside the Ropes