I’m sure many of ya’ll have seen recent articles about high value NFT sales (Jack Dorsey $2million tweet, $600 Nyan Cat, etc). What’s everyone’s thoughts on how this platform could impact nature photography?
The future of collectables?
Replacement income vs declining stock image sales?
Quickly passing fad?
Could a nature photographer with a high social media follower count actually leverage those followers and do well with these sales? (In brief research they tend to favor digital art and pop culture).
Has anyone tried their hand at NFT Sales? If so, what platform and Commission percentage fee?
Initially is seems very interesting. Especially without copyright transfer and publishing rights…
Well, I had to lookup what on earth these were. I finally found a decent description on NPR. The thing that caught my attention was at the end of the article:
" Then there is the environmental impact of NFTs that has attracted real scrutiny. The computing power required to operate the underlining blockchain system of NFTs is immense. By some estimates, one crypto transaction could gobble up more power than the average U.S. households uses in a single day. One artist estimated that generating six NFT pieces consumed more electricity than his entire physical studio did in 2 years.
“The energy production infrastructure is out of our sight,” wrote Brussels-based artist Joanie Lemercier.
“And we often have the feeling that electricity is abundant, limitless and we disregard its impact.”
That doesn’t sound like a suitable application for nature photography to me. On the other hand, most of us don’t hesitate to fly halfway across the world to do photography and we somehow justify the enormous energy and pollution costs of that to ourselves (and, yes, I’ve done it).