At my age of 75 I read your fine article with sadness. I am aware of that which you write but I also look at it with that “after me the deluge”. I started as a magazine photographer and writer in Vancouver in 1977. Work petered out about five years ago when the conventional media in Vancouver, Canada and the rest of the world began to shrink. Magazines, and newspapers, no longer wanted to compete by having original photographs. They now relied on handout photos and illustrations from those interviewed. This meant that across the limited board (Vancouver as an example) you would find and see the same photographs.

Another result of the proliferation of photographers is what I see as a bland repetition of the same thing. Uniqueness was fomented by art and design directors who would compel photographers and illustratore (including me) to practice originality.

At my age I have enough money in the bank a wife of 50 years, a little garden, children and grandchildren and see what you write about as an almost irreversible situation.

My only and very important release is my blog (from January 2006 0 over 4400 of them). I am my publisher, editor, art director, photographer and writer. Some of my friend tell me I need an editor to correct my typos. But the fact is that I do as I please.

A high Google presence means that about five or six times a year I get requests for large files of some of my photographs. The money paid for them is outstanding as some come from very good magazines or book publishers. But if I had to depend only on this I would not be able to make ends meet.

This idea that I put forward here about photographs all looking the same has to do with the amount of money that magazines made in the 20th century. That competition promoted style. Were is an equivalent to Helmut Newton in this 21st?