copy file from symlink

[Socaltom]

I'm trying to follow a symlink to copy a file. Everytime motion takes a picture it links the picture through a symlink named lastsnap.jpg. Unfortunatly I can't get lighttpd to display the picture ( yes I have follow symlinks turned on). So I thought I would try actually copying the last picture through the symlink. but cp ( -L) nor anything else I've found will actually copy the contents of the target of the link. How does one do this?
Thanks
Tom

[karog]

Here bar.txt is a symlink to foo.txt. And cp bar.txt rab.txt copies the target file. How does this fail for you? Are you using other switches that may be turning off dereference like -a or -d?
$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', '
# ls -l
total 4
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 Dec 22 17:27 bar.txt -> foo.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 16 Dec 22 17:27 foo.txt
# cp bar.txt rab.txt
# ls -l
total 8
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 Dec 22 17:27 bar.txt -> foo.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 16 Dec 22 17:27 foo.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 16 Dec 22 17:27 rab.txt
')