Built for the people who make the pictures.
Mastline helps professional paparazzi manage the business behind every image, from opportunity and shoot planning to dispatch, rights, payments, and archive resale, in one purpose-built workspace.
A Storyworlding company, built on the sidewalks of Hollywood and New York.
Mastline is a Storyworlding company founded by Lauren Proctor. It was built in collaboration with working paparazzi in Hollywood and New York, the photographers who stand outside the premiere, the courthouse, and the hotel at one in the morning, and who make the pictures the rest of the industry runs on.
Storyworlding is the practice of building the world around a story rather than a single product inside it. For Mastline, that meant starting with the people, not the software: riding along on shoots, sitting at kitchen tables while invoices were chased, and watching ten years of archive sit on hard drives earning nothing. Every screen in Mastline answers a question a working photographer actually asked.
The photographers who helped shape it still use it every night, and they still tell what’s wrong with it. That’s the arrangement. Mastline exists to make their business faster, more visible, and more valuable, and to give every picture they take a memory that outlasts the news cycle.
Independent professionals and teams of two to ten.
Photographers and small agencies who already produce meaningful volume but still coordinate through informal systems. Their pain is acute, their workflows are observable, and Mastline creates value without asking them to change how they already sell or distribute work.
Mastline for teams and agencies- Not a generic digital asset manager with paparazzi terminology added afterward.
- Not a generic media library, accounting package, or project-management tool.
- Not an editing suite; it integrates with the tools photographers already use.
- Not an automated legal decision-maker.
Not unprecedented features. Shared context.
Mastline’s advantage is that its features share context across the full commercial lifecycle and are designed for one highly specific form of work.
| Alternative | What it does well | What Mastline adds |
|---|---|---|
| Agency submission portal | Receives and distributes content | Photographer-owned history across all buyers and outcomes |
| Digital asset manager | Stores, organizes, and retrieves media | Live opportunity, dispatch, sales, rights, and revenue workflow |
| Project management tool | Tracks tasks and collaboration | Image-level metadata, provenance, submissions, licenses, and earnings |
| Rights-monitoring service | Finds suspected online use | Authorization context, asset history, revenue records, and operational triage |
| News alert product | Surfaces current events | Connects news directly to shoots, archives, buyers, and commercial actions |
| Spreadsheet and email | Flexible and familiar | One connected, searchable, automated system of record |
Before starting.
Do I have to leave my agency?
No. Every existing relationship stays. Those sales are recorded in Mastline with no commission, and use Mastline’s own pitching and archive tools alongside them.
Does it handle video?
Yes. Clips are pitched, licensed, delivered, and tracked exactly like stills, and the archive monitor watches them too.
Does it work on my phone?
Yes. Mastline is a web app, so there is nothing to install: it opens in a phone’s browser and can be added to the home screen, where it works like an app. Most photographers run the whole night from the phone and do the desk work on a laptop the next day.
Which markets does Mastline support?
Mastline is built in New York and used most heavily in New York, Los Angeles, and London. Pitches, licenses, and invoices work in dollars, pounds, and euros, with terms set by territory.
What happens to my data if I leave?
Everything exports from Settings — originals, records, licenses and invoices — with a 30-day window after an account closes. The archive and its history never belong to Mastline.
How do I get my old archive in?
Import from Dropbox, Google Drive, external drives, or an agency export. Existing captions and keywords are read automatically; untagged sets go into an assisted tagging queue.
Talk to the team.
Press, partnerships, agencies, or a photographer with an opinion. All of it is read.