Finding a photographer in Hawaii can be a challenge.
So we asked Hawaii’s top photographer, Gary Goldin, to help us out.
Goldin has a unique way of finding Hawaii’s best photo-salesmen: He uses an app called Fotolia, which connects Hawaii’s leading photographers to their local buyers, allowing them to find photographers with a particular market niche, and get them paid to shoot them.
In fact, Fotoli is so successful that it now has a partner in Hawaii: Instagram.
Goldins photo-selling platform is called Foto, and it lets you purchase the photo-essays of a photographer you want to hire for your business, which you can then send to the photographer and get a cut of the sale.
(Foto sells a “small” amount of photos to the buyer, for $30 to $50 per photo, for example.)
The app’s primary purpose is to help Hawaii’s professional photographers make more money by selling their work.
Gold, who lives in Honolulu, says Fotolias app helps it “be a very valuable resource for photographers.”
“We have a lot of great people,” Goldin says.
“A lot of good people want to work with us.”
And Fotols customers, he says, “are really great.”
Fotolin, which is now available on the iOS and Android app stores, has helped Golds business for years.
But in 2016, the Hawaii Post reported that the app was “in the midst of a controversial crackdown” on photo-sellers.
The app was recently banned by the U.S. Justice Department from sale in Hawaii, and a local group called Hawaiian Producers Association filed a lawsuit against Fotolo alleging that the company had violated federal antitrust laws.
Fotolicias ban in Hawaii was lifted in March.
The state’s attorney general and the U of H launched an investigation, and the state’s chief justice, Scott Chisolm, declared that the state was “very concerned about the impact of this alleged scheme on the state and our people.”
But Hawaii’s chief of police, Sgt. Paul Gannon, said the department would not take any enforcement action against Foto and that it was too soon to say whether the app would be back.
Gold says that despite the crackdown, Foto is still going strong, and he’s happy that Hawaii’s law enforcement is “getting the message.”
“It’s a very active community,” he says.
The photo-sharing app allows Gold to reach buyers outside of Hawaii, too.
For example, a photographer can get paid to travel to Hawaii and shoot a photo for his or her business, or a photographer could buy an item like a car and use the photos to sell it on eBay.
Foto can also connect buyers to sellers in Hawaii.
“We are going to be making a lot more inroads in Hawaii,” Gold says.
But he’s also excited about what he says will be an even bigger jump in sales from his business, thanks to the app.
“I think this is going to go even higher than it did in 2016,” Gold said.
