Professional Social Network for Models and Photographers

The Client

“If you decide to organize a photoshoot, where do you find models and stylists?” — with this in mind, William Upshaw, a Software Solutions Architect and amateur photographer from the US, came up with an idea to create a social network for models and photographers. The idea turned into a mobile startup Pro Photo Shoot.

The Scope

The customer needed to create an Android version of Pro Photo Shoot — a networking mobile app like a Facebook but only for photographers, models, MUAs, and stylists.

The Solution

To get the customer on board, we completed a test task for Android — developed three screens for a future app. William was so impressed by our work that he commissioned Azoft to develop the Android app.

The initial requirements for the future app:

to port iOS version of the app on Android
to make a pixel-perfect UI for Android
to make integration of the Android app with the existing Parse-based backend

While we were developing the Android app, the customer decided that the iOS app is outdated and needs to be rebuilt from scratch using Swift.

The resulting iOS and Android apps have beautiful animations and a wide range of networking opportunities:

Registration
Occupation identification (the choice of: a photographer, a model, a stylist or an MUA)
Personal information
Adding portfolio (including Instagram photos)
Searching users by occupation and cities
Chat messaging
Push notifications
Adding other users to “Favorites”
Creating events (casting calls)
Multi-language support
Referral program
Promoted profile option

The Challenge

During the project, popular back-end service Parse announced its shutdown and the customer decided to make a data migration from Parse to the cloud service Backendless. To help the customer and simplify the migration process we changed SDK and renewed code.

The more users there are in the app, the better and at the same time more complicated it is for the app owner — the system load increases. We decided not to wait and provided opportunities for scalability. For example, the photos were moved from Backendless to Amazon S3. This allowed the customer to speed up the app including the direct upload of files to the app.

The app UI design was made closely to a pixel-perfect layout but we didn’t forget a user-friendly interface as well. To the users’ delight, we created two types of swipe: the lower – for content (photos and data), the upper – for search results.

Technologies

iOS, Swift 3.0, Android, Java, Backendless, SendBird, Branch.io, OneSignal, Stripe, Amazon S3, Bugsnag

The Outcome

Pro Photo Shoot app continues to win in the US market and is currently used by around 10,000 photography professionals. The customer is going to integrate the app with Instagram to reach a wider audience.