Foap takes on stock photography sites with handy app

Foap is a Swedish start-up that enables you to sell pictures you take on your iphone, with Android coming soon. Your images have to be approved by the Foap team, but once they are you will make 50% of the revenue generated from each sale. Featured in Wired magazine as start-up of the week, Foap is taking on established stock photography sites in Getty, istock and Shutterstock with a unique twist. Pictures are sold at $10 each (£6.40).

For the iphoneographer, this is a great idea to make money out of your pictures. For business and bloggers, Foap provides access to original photography with a huge variety of images, styling and settings. It’s a simple license and commercial model and a great alternative to traditional stock sources.

I loved the idea of this business. It’s a simple model, technology enabled and uses the crowd to the benefit of all. You can only see there being growing demand for cost effective imagery like this, and in future I’m sure there’s scope for video to be added to the offer.

The photography industry as a whole is under transition. The impact of digital, the fast growth of companies such as Instagram and the improvements in camera technology allowing all of us to take great pictures have impacted the traditional photography world. No doubt it has impacted on the professional photographer who can no longer generate the same value out of the licensing of images that they were able to just a few years ago. The Foap founders talk about the smartphone potential as ‘democratising photography’ which is an exciting concept to consider.

Stock photography sites had already changed this industry, Foap takes it a step further and good luck to them.