TopFoto has launched a massive scanning operation to get John Hedgecoe's entire canon of work on line, with over 5000 images already available at www.TopFoto.co.uk. (search "Hedgecoe")

Professor Hedgecoe's most familiar image is also the world's most reproduced photograph - the portrait of Queen Elizabeth II that appears on UK and Commonwealth postage stamps. 200 billion copies so far and counting.

John Hedgecoe created and established the department of Photography at the Royal College of Art and was subsequently awarded the singular honour of being the first Professor of Photography in England, which post he held until 1994, and is now Professor Emeritus. His work is represented in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery (London), Citibank, the V&A (London), Henry Moore Foundation, Museum of Modern Art (New York), Leeds City Art Gallery, Art Gallery of Ontario, Tate Gallery (London) and the Sainsbury Centre (Norfolk).

John Hedgecoe teaches by example; taking great photographs to teach great photography. His subjects include landscapes; sea- and sky-scapes; architecture; children; wildlife; sport; moods; still life; the human form; world heritage sites; portraits of the great, the good, the famous, the infamous and the downright eccentric.

Thanks to the enormous range and world-class quality of John Hedgecoe's work, there are myriad uses for the collection: from advertising to editorial, from new media to television, from calendars to greetings cards, from educational publishing to magazine features, from Encyclopaedias to biographies.

Leading the field with his latest teaching book, "The Art of Digital Photography", published by Dorling Kindersley, October 2006, Professor Hedgecoe visited 27 countries in just 2 years, creating digital images from around the world, from the viewpoints that everyone wants to visit and capture.

Alan Smith, founder and Managing Partner of TopFoto met Professor Hedgecoe over discussions relating to his famous and rare portrait of Agatha Christie.

When Alan arrived in Norfolk, at the beautiful listed building and estate Professor Hedgecoe has restored, he was delighted to find hundreds of cabinet drawers stuffed full of pictures - staggering in quality and subject-matter.

The first phase of scanning and uploading to the TopFoto site is now complete, with images selected from Professor Hedgecoe's library of travel, people, moods, taken on his countless travels all over the globe.