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In early 2012, frustrated by the lack of an online gallery platform to deliver images to his commercial clients, Berlin, Germany-based photographer Andreas Chudowski began building a tool that would do just that. To create a system that would allow photographers to seamlessly distribute photos to their clients and configure a gallery to best fit each specific project, Andreas launched PicDrop.
There are dozens of providers out there who create galleries through which photographers can sell or print their images. However, all of these providers mainly have photographers with private clients in mind. I was missing a tool made for professional photographers that have commercial clients (magazines, companies, and agencies) like me. To my surprise, there was none. So we built one.
Initially, Andreas began building PicDrop for himself and some of his German colleagues. Today, PicDrop is Europe’s most used gallery tool. Andreas has plans to expand throughout the United States after a recently-launched English version and he is supported by a team of nine working across the world.
Cognizant of the individual workflows different photographers have with their clients, Andreas wanted to build a tool that was easily adaptable to a variety of assignments and clients. He also wanted to focus on only the functionalities that high-profile clients require. That would be seeing, selecting, and downloading their photos before communicating with the photographer about any additional changes or requests.
Some of Andreas’s favorite features about PicDrop:
Whenever I am asked why I’m not using a file transfer service like WeTransfer to send my pictures to my clients I reply, “Because I am a photographer. I sell pictures, not ZIP files.”
How did you (and do you) split your time between building this tool and your ongoing photography work for clients?
Honestly? That wasn’t always easy. In the beginning, I did both jobs at the same time. But over time, my sleep suffered and I now concentrate 95% of my time on PicDrop. Fortunately, I have great magazine clients who understand this situation and now only call me when they know that a job would be a perfect fit for me. I still do these assignments with passion, while my team at PicDrop has my back and continues to work on our tool. This is also an advantage for PicDrop because we have an active photographer on our team who really knows what photographers need and brings fresh ideas into our development meetings. It is so important to me that “For photographers by photographers” is not just an empty claim but our daily aspiration.
What’s next on the horizon for PicDrop?
For now, our main goal is to share it with more photographers outside of Germany and ease their lives! But of course, we continue to improve PicDrop every day, build new features and make sure PicDrop is the fastest and easiest way to send pictures.
See more of Andreas’ photography on his website!
Check out PicDrop’s platform here.