Kim,
it's all about the word "salvage" which to me almost always means how can I make it sale-able. If you mean what can I do with these images to use them artistically, that's a whole 'nuther matter and what John has done with the gull is a perfect example of creative cropping.
However, a note about salvage: when we shot our first dog show over 5 years ago, the former photographer and the show's superintendent conspired to make sure that we would end up shooting the Best In Show shot after dark, outside. As you can imagine, this isn't the easiest thing to do with on-camera flash and the state-of-the-art at that time. The image was less than wonderful. Acceptable, but definitely not something you'd use in an ad.
However, we had been shooting the dogs in Group so we'd have candids as well as formals of all the top dogs and we managed to get a bunch of great action and interaction shots of the BIS dog -- a Corgi. Linda took those shots and created a collage along with the BIS formal and we sent that to the owner at no charge. He liked it so much, he used it for a Dog News cover a few months later.
That was "salvage" in the extreme: we saved the shot and ourselves in terms of our reputation as show photographers. And turned a potentially disastrous situation into a win/win for everyone concerned.
Jim