Photohawk is a platform built for high-volume photography, helping event photographers upload and sell thousands of photos efficiently. With automated facial recognition and bib tagging, it simplifies the process of matching participants to their images, making it especially useful for marathons, sports events, and school photography.
Photohawk also provides photographers with tools to monetize their work directly through customizable online galleries. Each gallery allows participants to browse, purchase, and download their photos in just a few clicks, while photographers can set prices and track sales within the platform. This combination of automation and commerce makes Photohawk a convenient solution for managing and selling large volumes of photos.
That said, Photohawk has a few limitations that may make it less appealing for photographers who prioritize speed and automation.
- No instant delivery: The platform lacks real-time delivery features, which can be a drawback during live or high-volume events where participants expect quick access to photos.
- Manual editing workflow: Photohawk doesn’t include built-in editing tools, requiring photographers to edit their images on external software and manually upload them afterward. This extra step can slow down the workflow and reduce sales.
We believe that photo moments are most powerful when they’re shared live. That’s why we designed Honcho as the best alternative to Photohawk—where participants can view and purchase their photos instantly at the height of their excitement. By making photos available in real time, Honcho helps photographers capture not just great images, but the emotional connection that drives more sales.
For photographers who value speed and automation, Honcho lets them instantly deliver photos with face recognition and auto-apply presets during upload, ensuring every photo is ready to sell and share within seconds.
Honcho: A Modern Alternative to Photohawk
Honcho is designed for the fast pace of modern event photography, combining instant delivery, editing, and selling in one seamless platform. Whether you’re covering marathons, sports tournaments, or large-scale gatherings, it streamlines everything from capture to sale.
With AI face recognition, guests instantly find their photos without any manual searching—just by uploading a selfie. As you shoot, photos are uploaded straight from camera to cloud, and your presets are automatically applied for quick and polished edits.
You can sell directly from the gallery, set pricing, and launch promotions to maximize revenue while keeping the workflow fully automated. Honcho keeps everything fast, connected, and effortless, so you focus on capturing great moments instead of managing your workflow.
Benefits of Honcho
Honcho is built to simplify every stage of event photography, from capturing moments to selling photos. Designed for speed, automation, and flexibility, it empowers photographers to focus on shooting while Honcho takes care of delivery and sales in real time.
Boost Photo Sales by Selling Instantly
With Honcho’s camera-to-cloud system, photos are uploaded the moment they’re taken, allowing participants to browse and buy while the excitement is still fresh. Imagine letting marathon runners buy their photos, right after they cross the finish line.
This instant access taps into the emotional energy of the event, driving more impulse purchases and increasing overall sales. Everything happens automatically, so photographers can generate revenue while still shooting—no manual uploads or follow-ups needed.
Enjoy Lower Commissions
Honcho’s subscription-based commission model ensures photographers keep more of what they earn. Indie users pay just 10% per sale, Pro users pay 5%, and Studio users enjoy the lowest rate at 3%. Designed to scale with your business, it fits everything from solo shoots to full studio operations.
Protect Everyone’s Privacy
At public events like marathons, protecting participants’ privacy is essential. With Honcho, you can automatically blur all photos in the gallery. Only photos matched with face recognition are revealed, so participants can see and buy only their own photos.
This allows you to share your gallery publicly with everyone, while protecting their privacy at the same time. It’s a unique solution that’s only possible with Honcho.
Save Time on Manual Editing and Uploading
Honcho eliminates tedious post-event tasks, so your job is done when the event ends—photos are uploaded, edited and delivered automatically during the shoot. This removes the manual work after the event, which can take hours or days. Just shoot the event and watch sales roll in.
Together, these features make Honcho a complete solution for event photographers. It is not just about faster delivery, but smarter automation that helps professionals sell more, save time, and deliver unforgettable experiences at every event.
How to Get Started With Honcho
Honcho streamlines every part of the photography workflow, from capture to delivery. Whether you’re covering a marathon, wedding, or corporate event, its tools help you work faster, collaborate more easily, and deliver a smoother experience for clients and guests. Below are the key features that make Honcho a powerful alternative to Photohawk.
Upload Photos From Camera to Cloud
With Honcho, you can upload photos while you shoot. Each image appears in a gallery that can be shared right away with clients and guests, making photo delivery instant.
The process is simple. Connect your camera to your smartphone with the Honcho app installed. Once the app detects your camera, every shot you take is automatically uploaded to the cloud in real time.
After uploading, the photos can be viewed on any device, in the mobile app or web app. This means both you and your clients can access event photos anytime, anywhere.
Honcho uses wired tethering for maximum stability and speed, and it’s compatible with any standard data cable. Uploads are impressively quick, usually taking less than five seconds even for full-resolution images.
You can also control how large the uploaded files are, from original resolution to photos that are compressed to 640px on the long edge. Choosing smaller sizes makes uploads nearly instantaneous, which is ideal for live event coverage.
The great thing about Honcho is that it works without any additional equipment. Many tethering solutions (such as the CamRanger) require investment in hardware, usually to extend the range of the connection. Honcho just needs your camera and phone, and it essentially has unlimited range. This gives you the freedom to roam around the venue, without worrying about the connection.
Instantly Edit Photos With Presets
With Honcho, you can enhance your photos immediately after they’re uploaded. The built-in editor applies presets automatically, so your images are polished and ready to share within seconds. You can create your own presets on the platform, ensuring a consistent editing style across all your events.
Photos edited in Honcho sync instantly to the gallery, so clients and guests always see the latest version without any delay. This seamless connection between editing and delivery lets photographers maintain a professional look without spending hours in post-production.
Honcho also supports live collaboration. Invite an assistant or teammate to edit alongside you using the collaborative photo editor—all changes sync in real time. This makes it easy to divide tasks, speed up edits, and maintain consistent quality, even for large-scale events.
What sets Honcho’s editing system apart is its efficiency. By combining editing, syncing, and delivery in one platform, photographers can skip the back-and-forth between apps and focus entirely on creating polished, share-ready images while the shoot is ongoing.
Sell Photos Instantly
Honcho lets you start selling photos the moment they’re uploaded. Simply create price lists and assign them to any gallery—this gives you the flexibility to set different rates for marathons, weddings, corporate events, or any type of shoot.
Each price list can include detailed product options, from multiple currencies to download sizes ranging from 640px up to the original resolution. You can also create multiple products within a single list for packages or tiered pricing, so customers can choose the option that best suits them.
Once your products are set up, simply attach the price list to any gallery. Guests can then browse, purchase, and download their photos instantly through Honcho’s built-in online store. It’s a seamless way to turn every event into a sales opportunity while keeping your workflow fast, efficient, and fully automated.
Privacy is a major concern when sharing event photos for marathons, sports events, or school activities. Organizers often hesitate to share galleries if sensitive or personal moments could be seen by others. Runners want to celebrate their finish line moments without exposing their photos publicly, athletes prefer to keep certain action shots private, and schools need to protect students’ identities. Without privacy safeguards, galleries cannot be shared—and photos lose their impact and value over time.
Honcho addresses this challenge with built-in privacy controls that make sharing safe and effortless. The simplest option is to password-protect a gallery, allowing only selected people to view the photos. This is ideal for private events or internal corporate functions where controlled access matters.
For public events, Honcho offers a smarter way to protect privacy. You can enable automatic blurring for all photos in the gallery. Using face recognition, the system identifies each participant and unblurs only their own photos. This means every runner, athlete, or student can see their images—but no one else’s.
With this feature, photographers and organizers can confidently share a single public gallery while keeping everyone’s privacy intact. It’s a simple yet powerful solution that combines wide distribution, personal access, and full confidentiality.
Conclusion
Today’s photo delivery methods often leave money and engagement on the table. While services like Photohawk are great for sharing photos after an event, there’s a huge advantage in letting participants see and buy their photos while the action is still happening.
Honcho is the best Photohawk alternative that makes this possible. It’s built to deliver the right photos to the right people instantly using face recognition, while keeping everyone’s privacy protected. This increases photo sales, because people buy more in the excitement of the moment.
Photography at events isn’t just about capturing moments—it’s about creating experiences. Runners want to relive their finish line, athletes want to see their highlights immediately, and parents want instant access to school photos. If we treat photography as simply documenting an event, we risk being replaced—after all, everyone carries a high-quality camera in their pocket.
By delivering photos instantly, offering seamless access, and making it easy to purchase, you enhance the event, delight participants, and grow your business. The more value you bring to the experience, the more successful your work becomes—both creatively and financially.
