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Find A Photographer - iPhone Edition

Need to find a photographer for your assignment? The American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) introduces its' Find A Photographer (FAP) iPhone application making amazingly easy to locate, from within the palm of your hand, photographers all over the country. The application is free, and instantly connects to a photographers' ASMP profile online, including their portfolio. Let's take a walk through the application:

Searching for "photographer" on the iPhone app store, "Find A Photographer" is currently the top result. Clicking on that, to learn more, and you see this:

Once downloaded (for free), the entry screen, with the map of the US attractively integrated with an image of an eye (courtesy of Hermann+Starke) and the ASMP logo is the first indication that this is a clean and professional application.

Following the splash screen above, you immediately see are presented with search options for location, specialty, and even by name, as below:

Clicking "New Search, connects, in real-time, to the ASMP database, searching for photographers that meet the criteria.

Here, the search results are returned. In this search, I am the fifth listing. I can't discern how the listing results order is determined. It's not alphabetical, and multiple searches for the same specialty returned the same results, so it would be interesting to learn how to optimize your listing to appear higher.

By clicking in the photographer's entry, their contact information, and profile comes up, scrollable in my case, since the profile is longer than one screen.

Clicking on the "View Portfolio" button at the bottom, and the images are loaded, again, in real-time, from the ASMP member directory online.

Once loaded into the app, you are able to browse/view images in the portfolio just as easily as you would browse images in your own photos application, and your captions are included below the image.

Once you close the portfolio, at the bottom of the photographer's listing, you can click "add to favorites", and here's the favorites listing.

If you're looking for someone that is a retail operation, or studio, and you need to actually go there, the application has a "map" feature, that shows you not only where you are (blue dot) but also the location and address of the photographer's business.

The application is seamless, easy to use, and I pray, will be a download that photo editors and art directors who get those late-night or on-the-road calls from their editors, will use to find a photographer when their rolodex is either empty or unavailable.

Hats off to ASMP for their thoughtful and well-designed application!

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