Surf photography
on autopilot.

51 Photos is built for serious photographers. Whether you already own the gear or you're ready to invest, you need a DSLR (or mirrorless) with a proper zoom lens — or a watercase setup for in the water. We keep the photo quality bar high — that's what makes surfers actually buy.

Set it up once: verify your ID and add your bank account (a few minutes). After that it's fully automatic — every Monday we pay your earnings straight to your bank, in the currency you choose. No invoices, no chasing.

From a sale to cash in your bank is roughly 5–12 days: about 5 days for the payment to settle with us, then the next Monday run, and the transfer to your bank is often instant (especially in Europe). Use the calculator above to see it for your day of sale.

Pretty much all of them. You pick the currency per session — surfers pay in that currency. 115+ currencies supported:

AED, AFN, ALL, AMD, ANG, AOA, ARS, AUD, AWG, AZN, BAM, BBD, BDT, BMD, BND, BOB, BRL, BSD, BWP, BYN, BZD, CAD, CDF, CHF, CNY, COP, CRC, CVE, CZK, DKK, DOP, DZD, EGP, ETB, EUR, FJD, FKP, GBP, GEL, GIP, GMD, GTQ, GYD, HKD, HNL, HTG, HUF, IDR, ILS, INR, JMD, JPY, KES, KGS, KHR, KYD, KZT, LAK, LBP, LKR, LRD, LSL, MAD, MDL, MKD, MMK, MNT, MOP, MUR, MVR, MWK, MXN, MYR, MZN, NAD, NGN, NIO, NOK, NPR, NZD, PAB, PEN, PGK, PHP, PKR, PLN, QAR, RON, RSD, SAR, SBD, SCR, SEK, SGD, SHP, SLE, SOS, SRD, STD, SZL, THB, TJS, TOP, TRY, TTD, TWD, TZS, UAH, USD, UYU, UZS, WST, XCD, XCG, YER, ZAR, ZMW

Set it per session: sell in EUR at home, MAD in Taghazout, USD on a trip. Separately, you pick the currency you want to be paid in — we convert and send it straight to your bank.

Your only fixed cost is your plan's commission on each sale — 25% on Starter down to 8% on Ultimate. Nothing else on the payout itself.

On top of that, the one thing that can apply is a currency conversion — and only when the currency you sell in doesn't line up with the one you cash out in:

Global currencies — the 13 we hold directly: EUR, GBP, USD, CAD, AUD, NZD, CHF, DKK, NOK, SEK, SGD, HUF, RON. Everything else is a local currency: we convert it to euros when the buyer pays, and again when we pay you out.

Four pieces working together: the backpack captures leads, the app on your phone links them to each session, our AI surfaces every buyer's own photos out of hundreds — sometimes thousands — and payouts land in your bank automatically. An income stream you can run from anywhere in the world.

All of them — kite, wind, wave, SUP, wing, foil, and more. The platform automatically recognises which sport you're shooting and adjusts the sorting. Wingfoilers and kitesurfers filter on wing/kite colour; surfers and SUPpers filter on board colour.

Here's the flow:

1. Bulk-upload your photos.
2. Our AI scans and sorts them based on the sport (gender, gear, clothing, hair).
3. Once you publish, your subscribers — added via the phone app, manually, or signed up via the session page — get an SMS with a one-tap-to-buy link.

Signing up means we take you seriously. If you're willing to try the platform, you get our founder's WhatsApp and can ask anything, anytime. That'll get harder once we cross a certain number of photographers — but in summer 2026 we're just getting started, so you can be part of the "First 20 Club".

Absolutely. You can use 51 Photos for free — no backpack required to get started.

51 Photos is built by Lars van der Veen — founder of Surfana and Time 2 Wing. He lives in Portugal and has spent years inside the surf industry. The idea took shape in Nazaré when he was shooting some big wave surfers and realized how much they wanted to pay him for those shots. As he started picturing a real career around it — and the freedom it would offer — one thing became clear: the shooting was great. Everything around it, not so much.

Surf schools have two things going for them: volume and the name + phone number of every student. Add those to your session and each student gets a personalised link with their own shots on top — conversion goes up dramatically.

It gets better: tag the school on a session and your shots automatically show up in the school's free toolkit — the gallery on their website, their link-in-bio and their public school page. Their audience funnels straight to your session, and students buy directly from you.

The school earns a share of our commission — never yours. You keep your full cut, they get fresh content and a new income stream, so they'll happily push your shots. Shooting at a spot with a school? Point them to 51.surf/schools.

Fair point — a backpack won't work for underwater shoots. So we made silicone armbands: hand one to a surfer in the water, and they can later visit the site to find their shots. Order them straight from your account in the shop.