Combining a powerful DAM system, e-Commerce, and collaborative photo editing tools
elasticsearch
engine
digital asset
management
e-commerce
platform
Services
Industries
Technologies
About Project
Drew Altizer Photography is a top-tier event photography agency, capturing high-profile social and corporate events across San Francisco and beyond. As their business expanded, their legacy system failed to keep up with the demand, limiting sales potential, slowing image distribution, and making real-time collaboration difficult.
Spiral Scout designed and built a modern digital asset management (DAM) system, integrated a streamlined eCommerce platform, and enabled collaborative editing capabilities—allowing Drew Altizer Photography to increase revenue, scale operations, and improve client satisfaction.
Objectives
- Develop a responsive, high-performance website for storing, managing, and selling event photos.
- Build a seamless digital download and print order system integrated with a local Bay Area printing service.
- Create a collaborative workspace for photographers, editors, and clients to tag, edit, and organize images in real-time.
- Migrate millions of images and metadata from the outdated legacy system to the new DAM platform.
Challenges
Solutions
Migrating Millions of High-Resolution Images Without Downtime
Drew Altizer Photography’s old platform housed millions of event photos across a fragmented system. They needed a seamless migration strategy to move images, metadata, and user permissions without disrupting sales.
Robust Digital Asset Management
Spiral Scout designed an automated migration pipeline, leveraging Elasticsearch and MongoDB for high-speed indexing and retrieval. This ensured every image and its metadata were securely transferred and accessible in real time.
Creating a High-Speed Photo Search & Management System
The agency’s previous search functionality was slow and unreliable, making it difficult for clients and staff to find images.
Custom eCommerce and Search Platform
We built an advanced search engine powered by Elasticsearch, optimizing query performance for instant photo retrieval, even with millions of assets. Now, customers can quickly find event images using keywords, dates, and categories.
Seamless E-Commerce & Digital Downloads
Drew Altizer needed an intuitive photo purchase and digital download system that could handle bulk orders.
Robust E-Commerce Capabilities
Spiral Scout developed a custom-built eCommerce platform, integrating secure payments, automated watermarking, and print fulfillment services, making it easy for customers to purchase and receive photos instantly.
Enabling Real-Time Collaboration for Editors & Clients
Editors and clients had no centralized workspace for reviewing, tagging, and editing event photos.
Custom Photo Editing System
We built a collaborative editing interface (with the same features as Google Docs), allowing teams to annotate, tag, and approve images in real-time—drastically improving turnaround times and workflow efficiency.
Project strategy
Overview of the critical steps that shaped the project’s success and addressed its key challenges.
Comprehensive Planning & Technical Review
Before development, we conducted a full technical review, outlining the migration strategy, infrastructure needs, and eCommerce integrations to align with Drew’s long-term business goals.
Building a Responsive, High-Performance Website
We assembled a cross-functional team (PM, designers, engineers, QA engineers) to develop a fully responsive web application that is fast, scalable, and optimized for both desktop and mobile users.
Integrating Digital Asset Management & E-Commerce
By consolidating four admin interfaces into a single unified system, we gave Drew Altizer seamless control over image storage, sales, and customer management.
Project results
Drew Altizer Photography now operates on a highly efficient, scalable DAM system that has transformed how they store, manage, sell, and distribute event photos.
Increased photo sales & customer retention with a streamlined purchase experience.
Faster search & retrieval times, making it effortless to find and download event images.
Improved workflow efficiency, reducing image processing and approval time by 60%.
Seamless mobile & desktop experience, enabling on-the-go access to the full image library.
deliverables
- Developed a high-speed Digital Asset Management (DAM) system for storing and retrieving event photos
- Built a custom eCommerce platform with secure payments, automated watermarking, and print ordering
- Created a collaborative editing workspace for real-time tagging, approval, and metadata management
- Integrated Elasticsearch for ultra-fast photo search across millions of images
- Migrated millions of high-resolution photos & metadata without business disruption
They find the best solution for the problem instead of just finding the easiest way to solve the problem.
Drew Altizer
Owner of Drew Altizer Photography
OVERALL SCORE
At Spiral Scout, we believe that when it comes to software development and delivery, it’s time for a change.
5.0
SCHEDULING
On Time / Deadline
5.0
QUALITY
Service & Deliverables
5.0
COST
Value / Within Estimates
5.0
NPS
Willing to Refer
