A library of more than 125,000 images depicting agriculture and the countryside has been made available in a new venture, A1 Images, by Paul Lees, a Member of the Guild.
Paul spent more than 40 years in the agricultural seed trade in various product management roles and then as marketing services manager, and has provided editorial consultancy to a Kansas-based publisher distributing farming journals in North and South America. Over the years, he has also supplied illustrated articles on technical topics as a freelance journalist in his spare time.
“Titles that published those works include a number that have long since gone – remember Big Farm Management, AgriFindand Esso Farmer? – but also current titles such as Farmers Weekly and John Deere’s house magazine, The Furrow,” he says. “Now, it’s time for a change and the opportunity to maximise the potential of the images I’ve taken over the years has proved too great to resist.”
Paul’s collection is now represented by his A1photolibrary.comwebsite, where sample images are available to view, a free search service is provided to help find images that meet a specific need and images can be purchased under the terms of a Royalty Paid licence.
“Most images are available for a set price but we can negotiate fees for exclusive use and multiple images, whether for use online or in publications, leaflets, brochures, advertising, and so on,” says Paul. “There are sample galleries covering subjects such as forage crops, machinery, wildlife, arable crops, steam and vintage, and so on, and then themed collections intended to help clients find the right image for a particular project.”
At present, themes include wheat harvesting, sugar beet, cattle, sheep or individual forage crops including grass silage, maize and fodder beet, with thumbnail images supplied in a PDF document for selection.
As well as images of modern farming practices, the image collection also reflects Paul’s interest in farming’s past technologies, with several hundred images showing horses ploughing, wheat being cut with a binder and being put through a threshing machine, and steam engines ploughing.
- Need a stock image or a photographer who knows about agriculture to take high quality images? Use the search facility in the new Farming Media Centre to find professionals within the Guild membership.
