E-Vener
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The lack of response may be because most pro photogs don't shoot ONE photo and sell it.
That is a nonsensical reading of his question. Every self-employed commercial or professional photographer or anyone who has ever sold a stock photo, has one commission or a photo that has been licensed either once or a multiple of times that has been a peak earner for them. That is in the nature of the beast.
It's also not a valid measure of the profit made from any single shot. You need to figure in the cost of time and materials of that particular shot. Your title of *earned* does suggest how much profit however.
I bet anyone who has one big seller of a shot has lots of other shots from that same time period that have not sold a dime and probably have never seen the light of day.
Excellent point! The photograph of mine that I mention cost me in direct expenses 2 rolls of 120 Velvia + processing. If you want to include amotized expenses, there was probably a gallon of gas burned, a tripod that had been in use for maybe 15 years at that point and was bought use, an Arca-Swiss B2 Monoball tripod head that I had owned for maybe a year at that point and was alos bought used, A V-Pan Mark III 6x17cm camera that had also been bought second hand the year before, A Minolta Spot meter F (bought new but five years old when the photo was made); a 90mm f/4.5 Rodenstock Grandagon lens ( 12-13 years old when the photo was made); a Heliopan center-weighted filter (view camera users will know what that is); and here is the real expense: many years of shooting the skyline from different angles at different times of the year and a lot of thinking about what that skyline meant (was a signifier of) both to me and in the larger context of the late twentieth century and how the combination of those thoughts might be best expressed in a photograph. Obviously others react to the photograph as it continues to sell about 14 years after it was made. I have many other photographs of the Houston skyline that have sold well but that one just happens to have sold the most.
But finally for all of that, it was mere serendipity that I made that single photo, or you could more loftily say it was luck favoring a prepared mind. But when I walked out my front door that afternoon I was not intending to make yet another Houston skyline photo. (And I made others since then), but at the last moment I lost the courage to try for the photo I left my house intending to make.
My original goal was to try to talk Richard Thompson ( http://www.richardthompson-music.com/ ) into posing by a wall size painting of a Fender Telecaster in the parking lot of a guitar shop next to the nightclub they were going to be playing in that night. I chickened out because I was nervous about interrupting the dinner of a musician I admire tremendously. I got as far as getting walking up to the door of his band's bus and then decided not to knock. But I still wanted to make a photo so I drove a little farther and thought let's see what happens here, and lucky for me, something did happen and I am grateful.
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