Dennis my dear friend, I’ve had a revelation. Well, sort of.

No, I haven’t spoken to god or seen bright light where there was no light. I’ve discovered something about photography, which you have known all along and remained faithful to, while I was smashing furniture looking for ‘the secret’.

What I’ve finally discovered after years of photographic vandalism on my part is that I should have remained faithful to my own instincts, as you have.

All the U-Tube videos I’ve watched on how to do this and how to do that – in short, how to make my photographs look like someone else’s - was poison and a shocking waste of time. I used lenses I wouldn’t normally have used; shot subjects not worth the effort; tried to save lousy photographs with over-processing; and ignored the correct exposure for the actual subject just to make a sky look good, then tried to pull three-stops out of the shadows.

Yep, I’ve committed all those sins. But not any more. I know we all take lousy photographs occasionally, because we’re compelled to take photographs, even bad ones, but from now I will photograph what I believe is worth the effort, not what Nick Page or Marc Adamus or some other U-Tube guru says I should photograph, and in a way he would do it.

I’m telling you all this is because I know you understand better than anyone the frustrations of photography, and because, for some strange reason, I have to get the silly subject off my chest. I’ve wasted so much time. So I’m sharing what I’ve learned because I now understand that there’s no reason to make photographs at all if you never make anything original, and surely that’s the point of the whole damn thing.

Oh yeah, and I wanted to send you and Barb a bit of love. There’s not enough love about. The whole damn world’s gone mad. Go and kiss your wife and tell her I love the both of you, you wonderful old bastard.