Light Painting Photographer Eric Pare is known for pushing the boundaries and taking things to the next level in his Light Painting Work! Eric can now add being one of the first Light Painters to successfully venture into the world of NFT’s to his resume with his first NFT Drop that completely sold out! After learning about this amazing launch (that I wish I would have got in on in time to get one) I reached out to Eric to share his experience in the NFT space with the Light Painting Community! Below is the interview that Eric was kind enough to answer, hopefully your can learn a thing or two and maybe try your luck with this exciting new way to make some money from your Light Painting Photography!

LPP ∇  Hey Eric thank you for taking the time to answer some questions about this exciting new opportunity for Light Painting Artist! My first question is how would you explain what an NFT is to someone who has never heard of one before?

EP ∇  An NFT is a certificate of ownership of a digital asset on the blockchain. The example that is always used is the Mona Lisa. There is a single one of this. You can take a picture of the Mona Lisa, but it doesn’t hold any value. A NFT is a digital version of this. It is a unique contract that defines the ownership of the piece. This has nothing to do with copyrights or commercial rights.

LPP ∇  Was selling NFT’s something that you were actively seeking out to do for yourself or were you approached by someone or some entity to do your first NFT drop?

EP ∇  I was curious about NFTs just as most of the photographers out there. I worked with Sloika.xyz for my first drop as I had no experience or knowledge about NFTs back then. They made the whole process very smooth and they made sure that the contract was properly made for my needs. My second drop was on Foundation which was quite straightforward as I had much more experience at that point.

LPP ∇  On a technical level from scale of 1-10 One being super easy and ten being extremely difficult how hard was it to “Mint” your NFT’s?

EP ∇  Easier than it sounds! There’s a whole bunch of new things to learn when it comes to NFTs, but there are plenty of tutorials available, and the community is very helpful. The best place to learn is through the Twitter Spaces (audio conversations)

LPP ∇  Does minting the NFT cost anything on the front end before you actually make a sale?

EP ∇  Yes! It can cost a couple of hundred dollars just to mint one piece (gas fees). There are other platforms on which it is possible to mint for cheaper, but the main ones are on the Ethereum crypto currency and gas fees are quite expensive at the moment

LPP ∇  How were your NFT’s sold, did you do an auction format or did you pick a set price for your images? If you did the set price how did you come up with your price tag for the NFT’s?

EP ∇  My first collection of 9 items has been sold on Sloika within a few days for a total of 1.8E (7400$USD), and some of the items have been placed for sale by the new owners for up to 5E. Then on Foundation, I set my first piece at 2E (8200$USD) and it got sold within a week. We did the promotion mostly on Twitter.

LPP ∇  Without getting too much into the technical aspects, I understand that within the contract of an NFT you will also benefit from the future sales of your work! I think this is the greatest aspect of the NFT from a creators perspective, can you tell me a little bit more about what you will receive from the future sales of your work?

EP ∇  What’s interesting here is that the creator gets 10% of the secondary sales. But the secondary sale can be way above the initial price, meaning that the revenues are sometimes significant. That being said, photographies are not traded that much (as opposed to the craziness we see with PFP projects like Cryptopunks or BoredApes)

LPP ∇  Thats exciting! Last question, what advice would you give to someone looking to mint their first NFT?

EP ∇  Get on Twitter, follow successful NFT photographers and spend weeks learning about the topic. Join their Twitter Spaces, interact with them, interact with other newcomers. It’s complex, it’s new, it’s modern, it’s a totally different mindset. NFTs are part of the Web3 and a fundamental part of this is the “WGMI” (we’re going to make it). It’s a collective project. It’s far from the “Instagram influencer” business model we’re used to hearing about.

Don’t mint anything right away thinking you’re going to make a couple of ETH. Take the time to really craft your art and have a solid story. Be part of the community, help others, interact with collectors.

Once you take the plunge into NFTs, you’ll stop thinking about irrelevant things like when to post on Instagram or your number of followers. Your art is going to be your priority. Fine tune your best pieces as you know that once you’re going to mint them, they’ll be forever part of the blockchain.

As a reference, here’s what I prepared for my NFTs (for my collectors)
https://ericpare.com/night-reflection-one
https://ericpare.com/frzn

LPP ∇  Thank you again for taking the time to answer these questions and share your knowledge with the community!  Congratulations on all your success and I am sure you will have many more successful drops in the future! 

Unless you live under a rock I am sure you have heard that NFT or (non fungible tokens) are all the rage in the world of collectables these days. The concept behind NFT’s, especially with Projects like THETA, with their Digital Rights Management is really intriguing. I am not going to get into all the technical stuff behind how NFT’s work but something that I personally think is game changing is the fact that if you assign an NFT to your digital asset (Light Painting) you can essentially get paid every time your image sells going forward. When you or someone in the future sells your image the NFT assigned to it, via a smart contract, you will pay you a percentage of the sale forever! Lets say you sell your Light Painting NFT today for $100. a year from now the world catching on to how amazing you are and that same Light Painting now sells for $1,000,000.00! Via the smart contract assigned to your Light Painting NFT you can get whatever % you assigned to it, let’s say 10%. This can happen every time the NFT sells forever, creating passive income! That is good for ALL types of artists!

Anyway enough on that, the point of this article is to share that Lamborghini is launching their very first NFT and IT’S A LIGHT PAINTING, yes the image above! This Light Painting was created by photographer Paulo Renftle The NFT Drop goes live on September 25th! Lord only knows what these things are gonna sell for but if you’ve got some bucks to spend you can check it out here https://www.elysiumbridge.org/live

Here are the entries for the Light Painting Photography Contest for this month. The theme of this contest was ORB Light Painting. There are lots of different ways to make orbs and there are some creative ones in here! Please pick your TOP 3 favorite images and ONLY VOTE ONE TIME. Please pick the 3 different images you like best based on the images alone and leave your selections in the comment section of this page. The images all have a number in the title (EXAMPLE… IF ONE OF YOUR FAVORITES IS THE IMAGE TITLED “Light Painting Contest 01″ THEN YOU SHOULD PUT THE NUMBER 01 AS ONE OF YOUR CHOICES). Voters must include 3 UNIQUE choices for your votes to be counted. In other words no 1,1,1, or 5,5,5,…..The voting will end 09/01/2021 at Midnight Eastern Standard Time, Enjoy.

This Light Painting Photography contest is sponsored by the coolest companies on the Earth COAST Flashlights, Rosco and Light Painting Brushes ! Please support these awesome companies that support our light painting art from, without them this contest series would not be possible!