Picture spreads, with usually a full page devoted to each image, were separated form articles that included press releases, editorial and opinion pieces, and British and international commentators' responses to developments in photography and current exhibitions.

[7] Jay was paid little for his editorship and supported the position with lectures to camera clubs, part-time teaching at Harrow, Croydon and the London College of Printing and, with Osman, conducted four-guinea two-day photography workshops for hobbyists at an Essex retreat.

At its original location at his grandfather's house at 19 Doughty Street Osman established a gallery, bookstore run by his wife and sister-in-law[4] and a book-order company specialising in the photographers featured in the publication.

These changes in social politics took effect in the magazine by 1986, when Colin Osman resigned to make way for full revenue support by the Arts Council of Great Britain[18] and the transfer of editorial decisions to a board of directors so that, while inclusive of traditionalists represented by Gerry Badger, Colin Osman and Peter Turner,[17] perspectives introduced by members Ian Jeffrey, Jo Spence, Rebecca Solnit, Geoffrey Batchen and others in the 1990s brought Creative Camera's critical and intellectual content in line with more general art world publications.

[7] Susan Butler saw the use of colour in the 1990s, renewed with attention to the example of William Eggleston, as reforming documentary work in response.

The selection they made included the first published examples of photo-based artworks by Sarah Lucas, Damien Hirst and Angus Fairhurst.

[23][24] A compilation of articles Creative Camera: Thirty Years of Writing edited and published in 1999 by Brittain,[17] provides a survey of significant British perspectives on what constituted 'art photography', on the succession of movements and surrounding theory, the rise and prominence of certain practitioners, the question of social use, and changes in technology that had been debated in the pages of the magazine over its three decades.

In a May 1977 interview Helmut Gernsheim noted the tendency for young European photographers to look toward America as the source of contemporary and avant-garde imagery, while Americans remained ignorant of European developments of "new objectivity, of photojournalism, fotoform, and subjective photography", with "only Creative Camera, being in English...seen in the United States" to counteract the tendency.

[25] Thirty years later, Amanda Hopkinson, writing in The Guardian, described Creative Camera as "radical and art-focused"; an "immensely influential magazine".