SANTA BARBARA, Calif., – (March 19, 2014) – Named as The Next Web’s “7 early startups to watch in 2014,” Snapwire has emerged from private beta testing with high acclaim and a quickly-expanding following of photographers and photo buyers.

Snapwire is a mobile app and website that connects image buyers with mobile and DSLR photographers to sell their creative photos through a live feed of paid photo requests. Since launching in private beta, Snapwire has amassed 8,000 sign ups and over 40,000 quality images. The company has fostered relationships with hundreds of famous Instagram photographers and has worked with buyers from national brands, magazines and ad agencies in over nine countries.

Snapwire brings the muse back to photography – and offers direct collaboration between photographers and buyers.

Snapwire’s founder and CEO, Chad Newell, has been in the stock photography industry for over 16 years, co-founding a traditional stock agency called Media Bakery. The experience exposed a need to have a different way of bringing a new generation of photos to market. “More than anything, we want to make the act of getting photos human again, and because of that, we believe the next great leap in the photography business is centered on something human: creative collaboration,” said Newell.

The collaborative process begins when an image buyer is looking for authentic custom photos. Buyers set a price per photo and launch a creative brief on the Snapwire’s website. Buyers can optionally invite top photographers to their request and improve results.  All photographers are screened for quality, and if approved, they can submit to open requests on the Snapwire’s website or iOS app.

Riccardi served as a beta tester of Snapwire and is now building her photography business through the app.

Former Apple employee, Melanie Riccardi, was one of the first few hundred photographers who began using the app and submitting photos to buyer requests.“It’s become a staple in my everyday life, and something I love to do. I love to look and see what new requests are there, and see how other people interpret them. It’s almost like Instagram for me now. I open it up and I’m like, ‘What’s going to be on Snapwire today?'” said Riccardi. Her personal website features her Snapwire work.

Billions of photos are captured everyday and subsets of these have commercial opportunities. Snapwire provides photographers a new way to be compensated for their work, which may map to their everyday activities.

To download the app, go to https://app.snapwi.re