Photography is an art, but most people taking photographs are not artists. Photography is too easily accessible because cameras are affordable and smartphones have their own cameras. Most people just take photographs for casual pleasure, but there are some who devote their life to it and those people are the photography artists.
Professional photography is just as difficult as any other art. Consider that everyone can draw, but only a few people are good at it to create a career out of it. Photography is the same as only few are so good at it that they can create a career out of it. Unlike most arts, photography has become extremely commercialized and there is a lot of money in this industry. It may be surprising for most to read that there is a lot of money in photography as most photographers are not known to be very wealthy. Photographers are usually not wealthy, but the reason is not that photographs do not have a demand. It's pretty obvious that photographs are in very high demand. Look, I am about to use one right now.
The problem is just that most photographs are sold as stock image downloads and the companies that sell the stock image downloads have become money-making machines off the back of photographers. This is in no way an exaggeration because the founder of one of the stock image companies is among the richest people in the world; Jon Oringer, the founder of Shutterstock, is a billionaire.
Distribution of Wealth
The money that could have been had by thousands of photographers instead belongs to just 1 man. Stock image companies pay unbelievably low amount to photographers who supply them. Photographers can get as little as a quarter for image download and the rest of the money goes to the companies. It is common for the retail point to keep a large portion of the sale, but distribution of the scale in photography is at the point of cruelty.
To change this absurd system, Wemark is creating an image marketplace. Wemark uses blockchain technology to create a p2p marketplace where photographers can sell their photographs directly to the buyers. The images traded on Wemark will provide 85% of the money from a purchase to the photographers.
Blockchain technology is going to offer positive improvements to many industries but photography is going to see positive change so easily. The image marketplace is going to make sure photographers get the income they have earned. Wemark is not making the sales, the photographers are. This has been possible only because of blockchain because Wemark's smart contracts make sure p2p sales are completed properly. The smart contracts deliver the image to the buyer, give 15% of the payment to Wemark, and the rest is delivered to the photographer. This flow of money is managed by the code rather than a person.
You can learn more about them by watching this video or looking at their website and whitepaper.
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