Being a photographer the (almost) most important thing is for others to actually see your images. And sometimes that happens in a "I-did-not-see-that-coming" kind'a way.

But first ... let me set the scene for you
Back in 2011, when I was still "with" the local photography group – Hedensted Fotoklub – we spent an evening at a church taking pictures. We had been given various challenges, so it was up to each individual photographer to translate that into images.

As I said this was back in 2011 so what these challenges were I have long forgotten!
Though, the images I of course still have so I'll let you see a couple of them here 

Not to brag or anything, but I actually ended up "winning" a lot of the challenges with my images – 6 of out 10 as I recall :)

Anyhow ... some of the images stuck we me, and I started editing [especially] one of them. The one with the Jesus close-up (well ... that almost sound's like a Friends episode title :D)

…

Our Saviour

Right of the bat this is an HDR image merged from 5 bracketed images. In general I am not a huge fan of HDR but in "poor" light conditions (e.g. a church way up north in cold, cold Denmark) it has its advantages. So I ended up shooting Jesus HDR-style. Furthermore you should know, that the "portrait" is shot using my 100mm macro lens due to the relatively small size of the figurine. Personally I think you probably wouldn't think of this as a macro shot. This could just as well be me on a ladder next to Jesus ... or at least "A" Jesus.

Other than merging the images, only minor tweaks was made to achieve the final image.

Quickly the image started growing on me. So I started posting it on various online photography forums. And thankfully I also posted it on my 500px profile.

This could just as well be me on a ladder next to Jesus ... or at least "A" Jesus.

The Silent art of tagging

The good thing about sites like 500px is the ability to tag you images. Keep in mind, this was back in 2011 so tagging wasn't the big thing it is today where a simple Instagram showing a bucket of sand on a lawn has atleast 37 tags ... because we all know that's needed! :)

Anyways ... I decided to tag this one with the following: 

• religion
• cross
• church
• statue
• god
• bible
• faith
• jesus
• brass
• believe

 And thank God (no pun intended) I did.

And then Warner Music Called

Finally I (maybe) get to the point!?!
Because the they did ... Warner Music ... called. Or ... at first the emailed me. I remember getting the email, reading it and thinking "this is spam".

Basically they wanted (so they wrote) to buy one of my images to use on an upcoming CD release of Händel's Messiah.
But as I said I didn't think much of it and more or less put it aside (within an already messed up brain).
But they mailed me again – this time stating that this was not spam but a legit offer to buy my Saviour image.

So Warner Music actually did call. It turned out their art-director had crawled the internet for images of the Messiah, and had come across my image – hence the tagging, remember?
So we worked out the "formalities" I ended up sending them a highres version of my image ... and the sent some "higres" money the other way :)  

Show me the money

… or atleast the final product!

A couple of months later I received a package with the final product.

I must admit there is a touch of pride in looking at it. Not the product as such ... more the fact that someone, somewhere on this wonderful planet found my image in the myriad of images in the world, portraying The Messiah. And decided to reach out to me asking to buy the image so they (legally!) could put it on the cover of one of their releases.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this

Humble and proud.

 

Postscript:
As a tiny note I can tell that the "packshots" of the final products where show using my newly acquired portable studio-rig … which I'll tell about in a future post.