Six artists on their NFT journey: "It was a real milestone in my career"

In 2021, NFTs become a powerful medium of exchange, enabling visual artists to make money from their art. Notably, NFTs topped ArtReview's list of the 100 Most Influential People in Contemporary Art — the first time a non-human entity has topped the rankings.

The following six artists discuss their journeys in the NFT space.

Peter Hurley and Vadim Davydov
Headshot photographer and headshot team member, co-founder of Shabangrs

Art

Our first NFT collection in October 2021 is a limited edition of 10,000 Shabangrs, which are NFT characters with cameras, each designed by Ukrainian artist Serhii Huranchyk. Serhii used the form of well-known brands such as Canon and Polaroid, but removed the logo due to legal restrictions.

Selling all the NFTs should allow us to make enough money to make a game and an animated movie about our characters. We also want to build a metaverse called Shabangrville, a gamified online community for photographers and other creatives. It will contain photography studios, NFT virtual galleries, and merchants selling photography, video. Owners of Shabangrs NFTs have access to the community, can tour the virtual street/gallery, and have physical items shipped to their home upon purchase.

Art

But promoting these NFTs to our target audience—photographers—is challenging. The technology is still very new and only a few people are able to buy cryptocurrencies or create crypto wallets. As a result, sales were low, and after a few weeks, we had sold only 7,500 NFTs, leaving only 2,500.

To date, we've spent $5,000 of our sales on charities, including the "Picture My Life" program sponsored by the United Nations Association of Tampa Bay, which will help refugees learn skills as professional photographers. We put the remaining funds into our projects.
The poor sales of NFTs forced us to redefine our future plans and abandon movies and games. But we have enough funds in our account to develop the Shabangrville Metaverse.

We have a team of 20 people including IT specialists and designers. In addition to our NFT income, we have invested tens of thousands of dollars in savings. We also finalized partnerships with several US and European brands who offered to place their products in the Shabangrville virtual world and vouch for our growth plans.

We believe NFTs are the most important thing to impact the photography industry since the transition from film to digital.
It's a new way for photographers to gain visibility and sell their artwork. Many of them are still struggling financially, as photographers need a reputation in the art world to put on lucrative exhibitions. Fortunately, they can now upload new and old works and sell them on NFT marketplaces like Foundation or OpenSea.