A new social network created by an Israeli developer is trying to connect photographers with people and businesses who are interested in their services. The service comes in the form of an app (currently for iOS devices) and has a strong location factor which help find available photographers in different areas.

Picquest is an interesting project. It started several years ago after its founder Yishay Saban went on a snowboard vacation with his Family at Club Med in France. During his vacation, professional photographers took photos of him and his family and sold him prints of the photos. He only had printed copies. few months later he discovered that he lost his 1 year old son’s photo from the vacation. He was unable to get in touch with the photographer who took the image. Also, when he eventually did find the him – he didn’t save copies of the images. It was 2010. Cloud services, Internet and digital photography backup were all available but the image was gone. He decided to create a way to locate almost any photographer and allow direct purchase of images from them.

Picquest – order a local photographer

Despite the original reason for creating Picquest, the main target audience for this service in the near future are actually pro photographers looking for a job. This specifically appeals to photojournalists who can make their location known through the app and be sent for a local shoot by a news agency for example (in case of an accident, demonstration or any other unexpected event). Other businesses (for example a company like airbnb) can send photographers to shoot distant locations on a short notice without needing to hire expensive stuff or asking the owner to post poor quality mobile phone shots.

Picquest published yesterday an indiegogo project (with a $9000 target). The service already has about 2000 registered users and is currently offered free of charge (with plans of offering advanced paid options later on).