The photo market breaks into NFTs

Source: Observatorioblockchain / Jennifer Maldonado

NFTs are breaking into photography, just as they once did in art, sports or video games. Photographers and collectors are increasingly using NFTs as tools of expression, to spread their works and generate income directly. NFTs can be uniquely associated with real-world or digital objects using the blockchain, to represent ownership and copyright. Photographers today, like any creator, are forging an increasingly close relationship with NFTs. So far, a photograph bought for $2,300 sold for $30,400 in two months, according to Decrypt. In Hong Kong, five photos in NFT format exceeded one million dollars.

Photographs and NFTs

Since NFTs allow the creation of blockchain-based digital certificates, keeping copyright immutable, many artists are using these digital assets to publicize their work directly. NFTs allow them to monetize their photos without intermediaries and, in some cases, generate royalties for each sale and trade of their creations. In the case of collectors, NFTs are also useful in representing property rights in images; a fundamental characteristic in case you want to exchange, sell or negotiate a photographic work.  

Monetization and copyright opportunities

Blockchain technology and its derivatives are breaking into the photographic industry with force and, incidentally, it is changing the perception that photographers, creators and artists had about NFTs. Dozens of photographers now recognize the opportunities offered by the blockchain industry and NFTs. 

For example, photographers like Lyle Owerko and Bryan Minear have long been marketing their images via NFTs. In 2020, Owerko launched an NFT collection on the Nifty Gateway marketplace platform. Inspired by her project “The Boombox Project”, created in 2003, Owerko created a collection of six photographs of portable radios: Ghetto blasters , which he offered as NFTs on this market platform. 

In addition, Minear this year sold 5 of its landscape photos as NFTs in just 10 minutes. His NFTs traded between $200 and $2,500. Minear called Analytics Steps their experience as exciting. «It’s exciting to see how someone loves your work so much that they’re willing to spend some money on it,» he said.

Fight social media hacking

Likewise, the artist Loli Laboureau, who has been practicing photography since she was 13 years old, considers NFTs an “excellent way” to monetize and guarantee property.  During the digital event «Photography today: Its evolution in the medium, its opportunities and challenges» , organized by Sony, Laboureau complained about the damage of social networks in her work. She explained that she lost the copyright to a photo that she took during New York Fashion Week in 2018. The image went viral on the networks and people began to make T-shirts and posters with said image. However, she didn’t take a dollar of it, she explained.

Laboureau says that thanks to NFTs he has been able to recover the intellectual rights to his photographs, no matter how many times his images are reproduced on the Internet. Also, NFT photo collecting seems to be a lucrative business nowadays. The collector of photographic works, known as “ Freddie ” on Twitter, made a 1,200% profit on one of his works. Earlier this year, Freddie sold an NFT-format photograph for more than $30,400. The same photo he bought for just $2,300 in November. 

5 NFTs of photographs sold for more than $1 million

According to a note released by Artmarket , the digital photography market sold about 18,600 photos last year, with a price range below $100,000.Thierry Ehrmann, CEO and founder of Artmarket, explains that most photographers today work with digital cameras and rework their photos on their computers. So your photos are completely dematerialized and there’s no reason why they shouldn’t circulate, much more seamlessly alongside NFTs. However, he says that a number of legal issues related to these new assets still need to be resolved.

Artmarket indicates that the first NFTs to hit public sale have been received with immense enthusiasm, particularly in  Hong Kong. The former British colony has seen exceptional art market growth over the last ten years fueled by dazzling sales of Contemporary Art. Unfortunately, Artmarket notes, Asian collectors have never been passionate about photography and none have sold for over $ 1 million in Hong Kong . Last year’s best result was for a work by Wade Guyton, which sold  for  $390,000. However, five photos in NFT format have already exceeded one million dollars in Hong Kong.

The best known NFT markets in the crypto world are OpenSea, Rarible, SuperRare, Nifty Gateway, Foundation and Mintable; although there are many more. These platforms allow their users to tokenize their photos on the blockchain and display them as NFT tokens.