Well, I don't think it has anything definitive to do with either Alain or LuLa.
I think Alain does what he chooses to do very well, and as far as anyone knows, he has made a good living out of that, so great! He is doing it for business reasons, so what else did anyone expect him to do but cater to the market he has found for himself? LuLa is also interested in staying alive and making money where it can. Why not? So was/am I.
If there's a problem, I think it lies elsewhere, and I think I have just realised where and what it is. It lives in the Internet, and is called overexposure to photographic works. Nothing means much anymore; we've seen everything a thousand times over. We have entered the Kindgdom of Glazed Eyes, where the three-minute-mind is a luxury, never mind the long, one-minute-look at anything.
I live in the eternal hope of selling up, and today I found the strength within myself to face the little matter of clearing out junk just in case I get the chance to fly away. Well, I did that for about an hour, and depression set in when I found myself tearing up several albums of photographs I'd made over time using the different printers that came my way. What a gigantic waste of my time making those things; what a waste of funds on the machines I'd bought with which to make them, and the little rivers of extortionately priced Epson and HP inks that were consumed in such fruitless pursuits! What in hell was I thinking during all those long hours of earnest toil? Thank goodness HP abandoned the B 9180 and thus saved me from myself.
The above episode this afternoon convinces me that the era of happy home printing is well and truly dead but for the few people with the name and marketing power to make it profitable. For the rest of us, one is best served just admiring one's work in the website. It's far cheaper and the stuff probably looks better.
Russ said he imagines that something will happen, and life find its equilibrium again. I think he's right, and that state of equilibrium will see photography firmly back in its box as a minor hobby, with painting returned to its rightful place at the head of the world of graphic art.
Oddly enough, it just struck me that porn will probably do the same for sex: a worldwide revulsion to porn will eventually set in; honest, inter-human sex will be pushed away into the personal background and retained for its functional raison d'être whilst a new romanticism sweeps the world... no, wait: all those bloody Valentines! Maybe mankind can't handle honest.
Rob