Now I have absolutely no problem with digital images. Based on film costs I would certainly shoot digital if I were a photographer. But people like you doing digital manipulation and staged shots are giving the industry a terrible reputation. Nobody trusts the content of an image when it’s shot digitally because of phonies like you. I know you’ll just tell yourself that I’m full of crap and continue running your geriatric based bird shooting tours fleecing the old folks out of their money. But since your images are sterile and second rate, you’ll never get your images into National Geographic or any major pubs. When they need bird images they’ll continue to contact other real photographers to do the job.

My daughter used to get your bulletins and we would laugh at the contents. You continue to prove that you can only shoot sterile, emotionless, boring birds images and even those images are after bracketing, examining histograms, and extensive Photoshopping! You tried to shoot your daughter’s wedding and failed miserably. Year after year you try to shoot African safari images and again fail miserably. But that’s okay since you fleece the lemmings for thousands of dollars as they pay ridiculous sums to follow you to Africa or Bosque or wherever you attempt to lead them.

I respect the fact that you’ve put in your time teaching NY PS kids and there is no more honorable profession that teaching. But to continue to portray yourself as a teacher of nature photography only serves to give real photography teachers a bad name. Oh and nice job with your Outdoor Photographer column…  I think that relationship lasted all of one issue.  Maybe I’ll check your website bulletin archives in the near future to see if you have the balls to address this letter…but I’m sure you won’t. Phonies always convince themselves that it’s the rest of the world that’s wrong. In the mean time…keep on Photoshopping!

The letter above, postmarked Salt Lake City, Utah, came in a plain envelope with no return address.  And here is the best part: the letter was unsigned!  If I had received this letter a year or two ago, I would have been both furious and hurt.  I would have wasted a ton of energy trying to find out who wrote it.  I would have spent hours punishing myself with my own thoughts.  But after I read it, I just laughed. The difference: the self-help teachings of Byron Katie.  You can learn about this remarkable woman and her easy-to-learn program, "Loving What Is" at www.thework.org.   I am not sure why I felt the need to publish the letter above, but I guess that the contrast with the e-mail above is just too dramatic to ignore.  In any case, there is absolutely no need for any of you to send supportive e-mails decrying the obviously bitter, unhappy, jealous person who took the time to write the letter.  I am happier and more comfortable with who I am than I have been since I was a kid playing stickball in the park on Avenue U and E. 38th St. in Brooklyn, NY in 1959.