Old-school photographers grapple with NFTs: New world, new rules

Photography often has to weather disruptive changes from film to digital, for example and photographers find themselves needing to master new technologies or face losing out to more tech-savvy competitors. NFTs are just another transformation in how we consume images. Can photographers adapt and benefit from them?

Back in the dark ages

I go back a long time in photography. To the dark ages or at least the darkroom ages, to be more precise when images were analog and negatives or color transparencies had to be developed through some arcane magical process I didnt quite understand. If you had told me you had to wave a Harry Potter wand and shout Developus! I would have believed you.

You could make a decent living as a professional photographer in those days. There were a lot of career avenues: portrait shops on High Street, highly paid advertising and fashion photographers, local newspapers employed snappers, and specialist travel or nature photographers could make money from magazines and TV.