We seem to be posting a lot of hard stories and it’s great to post an uplifting story today.  It’s about a photographer who negotiated and got a $27,000 payday for one of his wedding photos.  It was first reported to be $18,000, but photographer/blogger John Mireles who first broke this story (read here) later updated it (read here) to the $27,000 amount.  Both articles are well worth reading.

We harp over and over (until we’re both blue in the face you might say) that you should register all your images, out takes and all, because you never know which one will turn out to be valuable. People always ask about how to edit their images to submit for registration. Like if they shoot several exposures of the same image to use as an HDR later.  Editing down will cause just one more barrier to keep you or delay you from registering. There is no added charge to registering more images on a registration application. Register EVERYTHING.

So here in this story is a simple wedding photo, not one a photographer might consider to be one of his or her “iconic” images, yet for an ad, it was worth $27,000. As a further example, in the second article, John talks about an “out take” from a road trip, of his “stinky dirty bare feet propped up on the dash of my ’86 Toyota Celica” which became a major national ad.

Which goes to show, ya never know.