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Professional photographer, Niall Benvie (www.imagesfromtheedge.com), is the UK's most prolific writer on natural history photography. The scope of his writing extends much wider into issues of land management and the polarisation of nature and culture as well as travelogues and commentaries on subjects as diverse as species re-establishment programmes and eco-tourism.

Selling your pictures on-line

Judging from the correspondence that I and other working nature photographers receive, it seems that many other people would like to join our ranks. And while it is very easy to become a professional stock photographer, staying one is perhaps harder than ever before. Here, I'd like to offer some pointers that may help you to make the break and stay competitive.

For most photographers, the glory days of stock are past and the main international libraries are becoming extremely selective about admitting new material. When I joined up with Corbis about seven years ago, a representative visited my office and took away about 1000 pictures to scan for their website. In common with other photographers at the time, I was even paid an advance against future royalties. Now I am doing well to have 15 pictures from an entire year's output accepted - and it's not because I am a worse photographer. This experience is mirrored by colleagues with Getty and other big names in the picture supply business. Clearly, for photographers who rely heavily on stock income, this is a serious impediment; how can you hope to earn from your new work when most of it isn't even being represented.

In the 12 years I have been in business I've always relied heavily on direct sales to clients and when the number of requests began to drop off noticeably about four years ago I started to ask clients why we hadn't heard from them for a while. "Oh, well actually, it's easier for us just to go to the web now and search there. Sorry." This spurred me into action; I had to make my best work viewable on-line and be to able to supply images electronically when required - or face an uncertain commercial future.

I edited the collection down to 3000 pictures to put up on the web, for a start. But while the need for a searchable on-line image database became clearer and clearer in my mind, the realities of actually getting this number of images up there ( a tiny number by the standards of the main libraries) began to dawn on me. For a start, all the images were on film so I had to extend my office helper's hours to allow her to scan the pictures in between doing her other work, a process that lasted several months. Having looked critically at a number of other sites I decided that users should be able to access the higher resolution version of the thumbnails without registration (although they would need to do this to build light boxes), that the images should be a comfortable viewing size - 500 pixels along the long axis - and that the Images from the Edge water mark, while present, should not detract from the picture. Big copyright notices in the middle of pictures do not help to sell them. The pictures, once scanned, were sized, converted to sRGB, water marked, sharpened then saved as JPG's in batches.

The task of keywording, however, was not one that could be delegated and there was nothing for it but to set aside seven weeks during which time I worked almost exclusively on attaching about 150 000 keywords to the 3000 images which Michelle had scanned. I was determined that the depth of the keywording would be unmatched by any comparable on-line collection, going some way to make up for its comparatively limited breadth of coverage. Before I began, I devised a database with 32 different fields ranging from obvious things like species and location to more oblique ones such as concept, environmental issue and cultural interest. For every picture I viewed, I applied the same set of keyword criteria, filling as many fields with as much relevant data as appropriate. As a result, some pictures were described by 50 or more keywords.

If you are tempted to think, "Yeah, sure he gains an advantage, but I can get by without doing all that work. Anyway, I don't have the time, or help!", think again. The days of buyers calling up photographers for initial picture selections are rapidly coming to an end. If they do call, it is to ask for a light box of images. With the current proliferation of on-line search facilities it is often easier for users to e-mail a request to their list of regular suppliers rather than spend time trawling sites themselves. Crucially, they want to see what is available now, not tomorrow.

The photographer who devotes time to building an on-line search facility, first and foremost, has a better chance of economic survival through the increased visibility of his or her work (though this is by no means guaranteed!) It is also a vastly more efficient way of distributing pictures. In the past we might pull 50 or 60 transparencies out of the files for a magazine feature to have only a couple used. Now we e-mail a light box when a request comes in, find out what, if anything is needed then mail only those images that have a realistic chance of being used. Light boxes are also a great way to make speculative submissions: there's no risk of image loss, illicit scanning or financial cost other than your time to prepare the light box.

An unexpected spin-off only came to light months after its launch. A young Czech biologist I was working with rather shyly admitted that he had used some pictures out of my on-line library for a web posting and hoped that I didn't mind. I said that as far as I was concerned, this wasn't a commercial use anyway and if he could make good use of the pictures that was fine by me. Since then, this resource has been formalised into the Symbiosis feature on my website, allowing biologists and other scientists, various NGO's and a couple of statutory organisations to make free unlimited use of any of the pictures in the database for web published reports, campaigns and PowerPoint presentations. The Images from the Edge logo doesn't get in the way and 500 pixels wide is adequate for a lot of PowerPoint uses. In return, they simply fill in a form saying who they are and what the pictures will be used for and send that to me along with the light box of images they want to use. This arrangement works from my point of view in three different way. 1. Every picture appearing in PowerPoint displays with the discrete Images from the Edge logo - a low key but ever-present advert; 2. When the pictures are posted on the web , the user is asked to provide a picture credit linking back to the Images from the Edge site, thereby improving our search rankings; and 3. If users show the courtesy of filling out the form, I can find out about research trends at a comparatively early stage, allowing me better to anticipate future commercial demand. For their part, users gain access to professional imagery which may be just what they need to lift the look of their presentation - free of charge. This seems to be a pretty effective way of advertising stock.

If you are already shooting digitally and having to process all your RAW files, you may feel that the additional work associated with keywording and posting large numbers of pictures is just one step too far. That's as may be, but if you need your work to be seen, for commercial or personal reasons, there may not be much alternative.