Peter Lik sells photo for $6.5 million

wow.

http://www.thephoblogr​apher.com …6-5-million/#.VIjeD1WJNpA

$10 million for a few photos.. The guy would've been better off buying POTN members 1Dx's

Totally nutz. Good for him.

Such incredible success with such an unfortunate name.

I like a lot of Peter Lik's work, and this is a good image, but it's not worth $6.5 million.

Take away the name and it becomes a nice image that would be worth a few thousand as a large print. There are many other similar shots out there which are just as compositionally interesting and technically proficient, but which aren't attached to a famous name. Lik wasn't the first person to photograph Antelope Canyon or kick some dust into a beam of light, and he won't be the last either.

Just another example of where sentiment not inherent to an object itself greatly drives up the sale price, because some investor or other person with too much money decided to pay for it. Which also gives it even greater infamy as the 'photo which sold for $6.5 million', thereby driving up its future potential sale price. It doesn't make the photo any better than another similar one which never sells at all.

Shadowblade wrote in post #17325403
I like a lot of Peter Lik's work, and this is a good image, but it's not worth $6.5 million.

Not true. The image is worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it.

I understand and agree with what you're saying though. There are probably a thousand other images out there that are very similar to this one.

Umm Welcome to the world of Art lol.

So... Question...
What does they buyer get? One large framed print for his wall or actual exclusive rights to the photograph itself?

Unlike an original painting it is a phot... That can be printed over and over. I'm assuming it was taken on a medium format digital format so what exactly does the buyer get for that much scratch?

Probably a one of a kind print, no reproductions. BTW he uses MF and large format film as well. Its not all digital folks!

Says on the link in the OP that he has sold a HALF BILLION DOLLARS in prints over the years. Talk about Right place, right time, and a truckload of KArma!!!!!!

IShootThings wrote in post #17325478
Not true. The image is worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it.

I understand and agree with what you're saying though. There are probably a thousand other images out there that are very similar to this one.

The image itself is not worth that much.

Peter Lik's name attached to an image is worth that much.

The image itself is worth a few thousand, if that.

If you want to see how much is the name and how much is the image, just consider how much it would fetch if Lik's name were not attached to it. Probably no more than the many other stock photos of the same thing.

Or consider how much more an image would sell for if he bought a stock image, put his name to it and said, 'I took it.' It'd probably go from costing a few dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars, with no change in the image itself.

It's nothing intrinsic to the image, and everything to do with the celebrity surrounding its creator (or claimed creator).

I will say this is one of the few photos of Lik's that I actually like.

Not $6.5 million, like.

Good for him, I suppose.

I wondered why Bryan from The Digital Picture had posted a 4 year old image on his flickr stream. Anything lik can do, Bryan can do better springs to mind.

https://flic.kr/p/q5C6​Yo


Another case in art were your just paying for the name and not the actual artwork.

Playing devils advocate here for a minute:

how much of this is BS on the price I wonder...... a long term plan to hype up your own market price?

Pick any half decent and relatively famous photographer, let the world know you just sold an image of a bent light pole for say 3.9 million (lets not get too greedy first up and go for record price!) but you haven't actually sold it at all....... A few years later when it becomes the norm for you to "sell" multi million $ images to anonymous people, it goes to auction, time for your pay day.....your real pay day.

I'm not saying this Lik guy has done this either now or in the past, but I'm wondering that it probably could be done with smoke and mirrors quite easily. Create your own "worth" by simply telling the world you sold yet another multi million $ image to some anonymous buyer........ It's not like you have to report anything to anyone to prove it. Heck you could even sell your image to some rich guy, say for 1 million, then make a deal with the guy that you tell the world it was actually sold for 6 times what was actually paid and bingo, you have a win for both the photog and the buyer.

Of course your galleries are set up in the ritzy parts of the world, you can now easily put 6 figure sums on the most basic of images, which would give you your bread and butter, in walks some rich guy looking to fill a wall in their new penthouse "hey, that's a bargain for a "lik" he sold one for 6.5 million a while back, I better buy this one NOW, I'd be losing money buy not buying it for only $800K! So what if it's a photo of a cigarette butt in a gutter, it's a Lik!


Whatever, good luck to him, if it's legit, then he's a genius, not only in his work, but more for his business savvy to put himself in a position to have people wanting to pay those sorts of $ for an image. If it's not, again, genius for thinking up such a plan.

It's a nice image, but to be brutally honest, when I first saw a thumbnail of this story on petapixel, I thought it was an x-ray of something caught in some unfortunates cavity!!

After seeing so many photos on here and places like flickr etc over the years by some brilliant photgraphers, I realise it's not even about the photo, like that ridiculous one of the supermarket shelves someone sold for stupid money a while back, it's all about the name attached to the photo. But you need to make that name in the first place Now I'm beginning to question whether some of these claims of sale prices are in fact nothing more than very clever marketing


Of course I could be, and probably are, way off the mark and there ARE actually people who pay 10 million for 3 images........what a crazy world we live in....

No worse than most "fine art" I have seen in museums worth millions of dollars.... And to me, most look atrocious and wouldn't spend $20 on the piece. Art is just a weird market in general.

I like this image though... Not worth millions, but its nice none-the-less.