To piggyback on the New York Times article from last week (our post on it is here), the Guardian weighs in on the challenge professionals photographers are facing from the surge of amateurs in recent years. But instead of blaming Flickr, the writer of this piece feels it’s the point-and-shoot digital camera that’s made the most impact since it, he says, has “levelled the playing field.”

Incidentally, I always bristle at the mindset from digital enthusiasts that all these outmoded industries — music, movies, journalism, photography — just need to adapt to the changing landscape. There is a part of that assessment that’s true, sure. But the other part of it is, content providers need to be paid in order to produce high-quality work. When we expect that everything be free, fast and downloadable because, hey, that’s just modern times, get used to it — then quality will suffer. There’s just no way around that.

Article from the Guardian