Milestone...

I don’t imagine that many people grow up wanting to be stock photographers. Like proctology or driving a cab, stock photography is more likely something we fall into once we realise that our great ambitions will remain unfulfilled. We’re not going to play Carnegie Hall, or write the great American novel, so let’s photograph two businessmen shaking hands or an attractive young woman eating salad.

It’s a few years since a friend introduced me to stock photography in general, and Alamy in particular. He showed me the portfolio of a friend of his, who had amassed - gulp - a portfolio of 20,000 pix. Twenty thousand images! That would take a lifetime, wouldn’t it? Well, here I am, with my Alamy folio having hit 20,000 this week. Being licensed at more than one a day, on average, the pix provide a regular income, even though the price per pic has fallen since I started with Alamy. With the proliferation of digital cameras, and computer-based processing (no more ‘darkroom magic’), there’s a lot of competition for picture sales. But stock photography is still a viable option for a ‘man on the move’.

The ferryboat taking pedestrians from Southwold harbour to Walberswick...