What if the photo found the surfer, instead of the other way around?
Photographing surf in Sydney was one of my favorite things to do.
I could come home from a single session with hundreds of photos. The challenge wasn’t just picking the best shots. It was getting them to the people in them.
That’s how DoYouKnowTheSurfer began.
The photos were there. The surfers weren’t.
At first, I tried the obvious approach: uploading my photos to a surf photography platform.
After each session, I uploaded the images and waited for surfers to find themselves and buy a photo.
I tried it a few times. Nothing sold.
The problem was simple: how could someone look for a photo they didn’t know existed?
So I flipped the process around.
Do you know the surfer?
The project’s name was the question I wanted to ask.
I started posting photos of surfers I didn’t know on Instagram and Facebook, asking the local community to help identify them.
People tagged friends, suggested names, and recognized whoever was riding the wave.
I didn’t have to persuade anyone to share an ad. They already had a reason to join in: spotting someone they knew.
Uma foto para encontrar.
A sequence to sell.
I photographed the full sequence of each wave, not just one moment.
Each session took around an hour. I’d easily come home with 400 photos, sometimes more than 800.
Then came at least another hour of work. In Lightroom, I selected the images, made light edits, and organized each sequence so I could find and send it later.
For each surfer, I needed a photo they could recognize themselves in. Face recognition wasn’t much of an option then, so I zoomed in on the face while keeping enough of the maneuver for context.
There was another requirement: that image had to belong to a good sequence. Finding the surfer was no use if I didn’t have more shots from the same wave to share.
Once someone was identified and got in touch, I sent the full sequence. People rarely bought just one photo.
- 011 h
Fotografar
Around an hour of shooting. Over 400 photos.
- 021 h +
Escolher e editar
At least another hour: light editing, face close-ups, and organizing every sequence.
- 03
Publicar
Uma foto no Instagram e no Facebook para a comunidade identificar.
- 04
Conversar
O surfista se reconhecia e entrava em contato.
- 05
Enviar
A private album with the full sequence.
- 06
Comprar
Escolha e pagamento pela plataforma.
Instagram found the surfer. The website handled the sale.
Instagram turned out to be much better at finding surfers than the specialist platform.
But I kept using the website. When someone got in touch, I created a private album with their photos and sent a link so they could choose and purchase through the platform.
Every surfer who recognized themselves became a conversation: I replied, shared the album, and followed up on the purchase.
In July and August 2021, the platform owner messaged me several times about the sales, asking more than once what my secret was.
Conversation with the platform owner, July–August 2021.
“I can’t keep up with you, Mancini! What’s the secret? Do you plan ahead?”
I replied: “This time I think the secret was shooting the whole wave sequence, because it looks like two guys bought a lot of photos.”
That was in 2021.
Back then, the platform relied on surfers searching for their own photos. Today, image-recognition tools could change that part of the process.
View the project on Instagram ↗