An amateur photographer has landed herself a tidy little windfall after tech giant Google bought an image she snapped on her iPhone a decade ago to use in its latest ad campaign.
British woman Hannah Huxford snapped a photo of a seagull eating a chip on her phone way back in 2011 when she was holidaying at the coastal town of Bridlington in East Yorkshire on Britain’s east coast.
Image: Hannah Huxford
Huxford, who is a car sales person by day and budding amatuer photographer by night, thought no more of the image until she was contacted by the tech behemoth to use the shot for its latest outdoor and digital campaigns in spots across the UK and Ireland.
Sadly, there is a confidentiality agreement in place and it’s not clear what Google paid to use the shot of the hungry bird.
When approached, Huxford initially thought the whole thing was a gee-up.
Huxford telling the BBC: “I thought: ‘Oh here we go!” when she received the phone call.
Image: Hannah Huxford
She then signed a confidentiality agreement before realising who the client actually was.
The shot has been licensed by Google to be used for 30 days on billboards in England and Ireland, and for 12 months online, Huxford said.
Huxford recalls shooting the shot on her Apple 3G phone a decade ago while on a trip to the seaside with her husband.
Finding themselves “bombarded by herring gulls”, one particularly “cheeky chappy” caught Huxford’s attention and she turned her camera on the voracious gull.
“As soon as we had finished our chips he was off,” she said.”This one was on the bin and was fearless. It was giving me the eye and was gulping down chips.”
