You’re probably no stranger to NFTs by now. No, actually, you heard of some bizarre news article telling you how a relic from the 2010s, the Nyan Cat GIF, has sold for almost $600,000. And like most of us, this left you wondering whether you’re transported into the Twilight Zone in your sleep.
Thanks to NFTs, almost anything digital can now be “tokenized” or “minted” and therefore made available for anyone in the world to buy through the blockchain.
So if you’re struggling to wrestle with the whole idea behind NFTs and how exactly they can affect photographers, you’re in the right place. Today, we’re going to help you get up to speed with NFTs and how can it benefit photographers like you.
What is an NFT?
So you may already know it stands for “non-fungible token.” But that doesn’t really explain anything, especially how and why they can be sold for insane amounts of real life dollars.
A non-fungible token can be overly simplified as a unique, one of one digital copy of an original work. Now “minting” an NFT is the process of entering an original work (drawings, music, videos, photos etc.) into the blockchain, where it can then be sold and bought.
This is where it gets really confusing for just about anyone new to NFTs: buying an NFT gives you an indisputable certificate of ownership of that digital asset, but it does not give you exclusive access to that digital asset.
Everything on the internet can still be viewed, downloaded, copied and re-distributed, and the recent boom in the NFT space doesn’t change that.
That is to say, you can re-create, screenshot, or take a picture of Claude Monet’s Water Lily Pond and then share that picture with your friends, but it’s still the person who bought the painting for 70.4 million dollars who owns it.
It’s in the ownership of that one-of-a-kind digital asset where the value of buying an NFT lies.
What’s this I’m Hearing about Blockchain?
Here’s a fairly basic, straightforward version explanation of blockchain tech à la ELI5.
A blockchain is essentially a massive public ledger that keeps track of billions of crypto transactions that happen all over the globe every day. An equally massive computer network, called nodes, will record every transaction and verify if the transaction is valid, determining if it’s safe to push through with the transaction or not.
Now on a slightly technical level, blocks can be thought of as individual pages on a ledger containing all of the blockchain’s past transactional data. In time, newer blocks are added to the blockchain. Nodes, or the aforementioned network of individual computers, will talk with each other to validate new transactions on newer blocks and then update or synchronize them with previous blocks with this new data.
This insanely redundant process of validating and recording data across a massive network makes the blockchain impossible to tamper with, at least in theory.
The Ethereum blockchain, among other blockchains, supports NFTs which have slightly different and extra data baked in each token, as opposed to a regular Ethereum coin. But just like any crypto coin, NFTs will go through the very same rigorous tracking and transaction checks that will keep a record of every NFT transfer, past and future.
Non-fungible Tokens and Photographers
So now that you have a vague idea of what NFTs are and the environment that they are in, you might be thinking,
What’s all this got to do with photographers?
Well, you might want to start paying attention to NFTs. This relatively young space in the art industry has been receiving a lot of hype for its ability to give every type of creator access to a marketplace where they can monetize their craft with relative ease.
Remember, pretty much everything digital, a piece of art or otherwise, can be tokenized as an NFT. So if Twitter’s Jack Dorsey can sell a tweet as an NFT for $2.9 million dollars, you can go ahead and sell your photographic work as NFTs.
Photographers across different niches are getting more and more involved in the NFT space. Landscape photographers for one are doing really well, with the top artists earning an average of 7.802 ETH per NFT. At the time of writing, 7.802 ETH is roughly equivalent to $35,675. Some NFTs, like this photo of a Hawaii landscape, can even go as high as $300,000.
Cath Simard’s Widely-Stolen Hawaii Road Photo. Sold for $300,00 and then made absolutely free.
If you’ve got a back catalog of personal projects that are sitting in your hard drive doing nothing, it might be worth looking into minting a selection of your work as NFTs and selling it on the top marketplaces. But before we even get into minting NFTs, let’s talk about what exactly is a buyer going to get if they buy your NFT photos.
Copyright, Licensing, and NFTs
Let’s step back for a minute and review what we’ve learned so far.
To recap, NFTs are tokens — they are indisputable certificates of ownership of a unique, non-interchangeable digital asset, like video clips, music, photos and what have you. NFTs are issued and are protected by the blockchain technology that it is a part of.
Buying an NFT gives you exactly just that: it’s a deed of ownership of that specific digital asset.
Now what makes matters a little more confusing is that, in effect, an NFT is just a certificate of ownership of a digital copy… of an original work. The original work being the original digital file; the NFT will be categorized as “a copy or a derivative of the original work.”
An NFT then is both a digital copy of an original work, and a certificate of ownership of that digital copy.
In most countries, like the U.S., your work is under copyright protection from the moment the photo is created. Selling your photos as NFTs does not strip you of copyright ownership.
Here’s a great analogy of how this works from Lindsay Adler:
“For example, if you were selling a physical print, the owner of that print wouldn’t have the right to use your image for commercial use. Their only rights would be to sell the image to another buyer and to display the artwork.”
When you are selling an NFT photo, you are selling a print of your work, albeit in a digital space. Whoever buys the digital reproduction of your photo will not have the rights to use your NFT for any commercial applications. You retain full copyright ownership of the original work, and will have complete freedom as to whatever you may want to do with it in the future and beyond.
If you can take one thing from this article, let it be this: buyers should never equate owning an NFT to owning the original work. Buyers only get ownership to a digital copy of that original work.
Why are NFTs Worth So Much Money?
I keep copyright ownership to my photos, even when I make NFTs out of ‘em, since I’m only selling a digital copy of my original work. But how can NFTs possibly fetch such astronomical prices when they possess so little value — I’m selling digital prints!
Look, anything is worth what someone else is willing to pay for it. So if you think someone will be happy to purchase an entry from your portrait series for $10,000, then nobody’s stopping you from listing your NFT at that price. It’s solely up to you, the creator, who decides how much your NFTs are going to be listed.
That said, here are some factors that can help you understand why NFTs can command such prices.
Rarity — Creators can create a one-of-one-edition-and-never-again of an NFT, or they can make it available as edition #1 out of 100. This scarcity, even if glaringly artificial because the artist alone decides how many editions there can be, will automatically drive up the NFT’s perceived value.
If, say, Annie Leibovitz ever decides to sell a one-off NFT and then claim to never again venture any further into the space, I’d imagine that NFT will fetch quite an exorbitant price tag.
Ownership History — Going back to the rhetorical Annie scenario, it’s easy to see how much inherent value an NFT will automatically possess, depending on who issues the NFT and its potentially high-profile list previous owners.
NFTs as Speculative Assets — Alright, it took me this long to use the baseball card analogy, and it goes like this. A baseball card’s intrinsic value is pretty much nothing. It’s a piece of paper decorated with a photo and maybe some glossy film. It’s worth nothing on its own. However, attach a global following of enthusiastic communities around baseball cards and you can sell an Honus Wagner for $3.12M easy.
Collecting and selling and minting NFTs could be seen as a natural, digital evolution of fine art collecting.
NFTs, just like antiques, fine art, and more recently, Pokémon cards are speculative assets. For most collectors, the hope is that you buy something today and sell it in the future for a lot of profit.
Conclusion
NFT photos are quickly becoming another viable avenue where photographers and artists can monetize their craft. Remember, if you’re buying an NFT, you also get to support your favorite artists directly, on top of you owning a cool digital asset that has the potential to skyrocket in value in time.
Another thing you should consider if you are ever interested in selling NFTs is that you can set is so that you can earn royalties as your NFT changes hands over time, letting you earn more from your work years after it’s left your collection.
Now if this got you all excited about a potential pivoting point for your photography career, pro or hobbyist, stay tuned for the in-depth guide to minting NFTs for photographers.
For now, what’s your take on NFTs? NFT photography? Do you think NFT photos are here to stay, or is this space just another bubble waiting to burst? Let us know in the comments below!