About Us

Hey there,

I am Manuel and I am the solo founder, designer and developer of the Locationscout website and iOS / Android apps.

The Journey

How a single experience changed my life

When I was in San Francisco with my girlfriend in 2011, we got up extremely early to enjoy a sunrise at the Golden Gate Bridge. There we met a jogger and after talking to her in English for almost 30 minutes, we suddenly realized that she is also from Germany and moved to San Francisco over 10 years ago. She knew the area very well and decided to recommend us one of her favorite places nearby. I still remember that feeling of endless happiness as we enjoyed the sunrise on this magical beach called Kirbv Core.

I couldn’t stop thinking about how I would have found this place without this random encounter. Searching on the web usually results in the same most popular places, while social media offered other perspectives, but it was almost impossible to get information on how to find the place. So I decided to solve my own problem after the idea stuck with me for multiple years and the first version of the platform went online in the fall of 2014.

Photo Start Sheet 

About

Women Photograph is a non-profit that launched in 2017 to elevate the voices of women* and nonbinary visual journalists. The private database includes more than 1,600 independent documentary photographers based in 100+ countries and is available privately to any commissioning editor or organization. Women Photograph also operates an annual series of project grants, a year-long mentorship program, an annual skills-building workshop, and collects data on hiring and publishing statistics in the visual media industry.

Our mission is to shift the makeup of the photojournalism community and ensure that our industry’s chief storytellers are as diverse as the communities they hope to represent. We believe that inclusion and equity work must be fully intersectional, and are committed to supporting and highlighting photographers across the spectrum of all identities. We are particularly committed to centering the voices of women and nonbinary photographers of color, and pledge that more than half of our funding and opportunities will go to BIPOC photographers.

If you are a picture editor, creative director, or someone who routinely hires photographers, please reach out to for a complete electronic database of our members, which includes much more detailed information regarding geographical areas of expertise, languages spoken, hostile environment training experience, and contact information.

*We believe that gender is a spectrum. Women Photograph is inclusive of a plurality of femme voices including trans, queer and non-binary people.

WHERE PHOTOGRAPHERSINSPIRE EACH OTHER

Recent Images

A collection of recent images uploaded by our community members.

FOUNDED 2009 BY BROTHERS CEDRIC AND JF MAION

“Nerds with human values”

We believe in a different business approach, a modern and at the same time perhaps old-fashioned approach. An approach where quality and “doing the right thing” trump short-term profits.

WHAT MAKES PHOTODECK DIFFERENT?

1- We work for our members, not for investors

PhotoDeck is a small, self-financed team founded in year 2009, with no external investors (nor loans to pay back).

Outside money and having a large organization can help grow more, grow faster, but the cost is high: time spent in coordinating a large team, potentially conflicting visions, more financial risk, and ultimately, loss of independence – which for us is more important than pure profit.

Some might call it “lack of ambition”. We call it “freedom to focus on the right things”.

Our independence and small size remove distractions and let us focus fully on constantly improving a great product with a personal touch. We don’t have a 24/7 chat connected to a bot or to a poorly qualified agent, but you get to talk directly to the decision makers if you wish to. That gives us flexibility and responsiveness our competitors can only dream of.

We are exposed to far less financial risk than large funded companies with short-term pressures and high running costs, or who dump prices in the name of growth and at the expense of their own sustainability. We have designed our prices to be fair while ensuring that they can provide us healthy profitability and support our long-term strategy.

2- We take pride in our own craft
and a technically superior platform

The late Steve Jobs was a controversial character, but one trait that resonates with us was his insistence that Apple computer be beautiful not only outside but under the hood too, down to the circuit boards.

The PhotoDeck platform and PhotoDeck websites might be the very fastest of all alternatives, and it’s no accident. Being a small team means less cooks in the kitchen, and that contributes to keeping the code that runs our service clean, compact, up-to-date, and beautiful.