As soon as he took the picture, Janis Krums knew he had something. What he didn’t know is how much of a something he really had.
If Krums’ name sounds familiar, it’s because he took one of the most famous viral pictures of all time — the first image of the U.S. Airways jet that landed in the icy Hudson River on Jan. 15, 2009, with all passengers surviving.
Krums, who was on a ferry at the time, uploaded the photo to TweetDeck and tweeted out the link. Within 34 minutes he was being interviewed live on MSNBC.
http://twitpic.com/135xa – There’s a plane in the Hudson. I’m on the ferry going to pick up the people. Crazy.
— Jānis Krūms (@jkrums) January 15, 2009
Throughout the day he was inundated with requests to use his instafamous photo, Krums told me by phone: “Basically everyone” was trying to get the rights to the photo, including the Associated Press. Read more
