Published by Feature Shoot • 2 months ago
In the fall of 2021, Christie’s, the iconic auction house, surpassed $100 million in NFT sales. It had been almost a year after the artist Beeple made headlines worldwide for breaking the record for the most expensive artwork sold online: $69 million. In the last year, photography NFTs have sold alongside photographs by the likes of Ansel Adams and Diane Arbus, drawing attention and interest from artists and collectors alike. In this story, we’ll take a closer look at what NFTs are and what they could mean for photographers.
NFTs explained, without the jargon
NFTs are “non-fungible tokens,” meaning they’re unique and can’t be duplicated. An NFT is a digital asset that uses blockchain technology to provide proof of provenance for digital artworks, making it possible for collectors to own photos, gifs, videos—you name it—in a way that would be impossible otherwise. At the same time, they leave a clear trail back to the artist and enable photographers to earn money from the sale of digital pieces.
Of course, other copies of those same photographs can (and often do) appear elsewhere on the web, but they are not the authentic, verified version. Someone could pull a photo from your website or take a screengrab, but they wouldn’t own that artwork—in the same sense that someone who pulls a photo of an Edward Steichen print from Google Images wouldn’t own that artwork. To oversimplify, an NFT is a digital file that acts as a certificate of authenticity. It might also help to think of it as an artist signature.
SOURCE & Full story: https://iso.500px.com/what-you-need-to-know-about-nfts-as-a-photographer/