Water Social Club is a platform connecting surfers with the photographers who capture them in the water.

The idea came from a simple frustration: thousands of surf photos are taken every day, yet most surfers never know they exist — while photographers struggle to distribute and monetise their work efficiently.

We built with my friend Antoine, Water Social Club to bridge that gap through a seamless marketplace designed around how surf sessions actually happen.

The challenge

Surf photography is highly fragmented.

Images are scattered across Instagram accounts, local communities and private galleries. Surfers have no easy way to know whether they were photographed, and photographers spend significant time sorting, promoting and delivering their work.

The challenge was to create a simple experience connecting place, time, image recognition and purchase, while respecting privacy and the specific needs of surfers, photographers and surf schools.

Key question

How can we make discovering and buying a surf photo feel as effortless as the session itself?

Design approach

The experience was designed around one simple behaviour: search where and when you surfed, then discover what was captured.

From there, we built a scalable product connecting session discovery, photographer profiles, AI-assisted matching and frictionless purchasing.

Discovery

Creating a search experience based on surf spot and date, allowing surfers to quickly find photography sessions relevant to them.

Ai matching

Introducing image recognition based on faces and equipment to help surfers locate themselves across large volumes of photography.

Marketplace Experience

Designing public photographer profiles, session galleries and simple purchasing flows, with photographers setting their own prices and Water Social Club operating through a marketplace commission model.

Privacy & surf schools

Designing distinct public and private session flows, including protected galleries for surf schools, and automatic privacy measures for minors.

Brand experience

Building the visual identity, tone and creative direction around surf culture without falling into the usual visual clichés — creating a brand able to speak equally to surfers, photographers and professional partners.

My role

I worked across the business, brand and product from the initial concept to the evolving platform.

My work included:

— Product strategy and service definition
— Brand positioning and visual direction
— End-to-end UX and UI design
— Marketplace and pricing experience
— Search and discovery flows
— AI-assisted photo matching experience
— Photographer profiles and public galleries
— Private surf school journeys
— Privacy and minors experience
— Design system and product evolution
— Creative direction across brand and acquisition

— Vibe Coding

Impact & value

Water Social Club turned a fragmented offline behaviour into a structured digital marketplace.

The platform created:

— A simpler way for surfers to discover photos taken during their sessions
— A new distribution and monetisation channel for surf photographers
— A scalable experience supporting photography, video and drone content
— Dedicated workflows for individual photographers and surf schools
— A product foundation designed to expand across new surf destinations and communities

From a moment in the water to an image worth keeping.