Multi-Photographer Marketplace Development

# PhotoX – Development Scope

PhotoX is a **professional multi-photographer marketplace** for South Africa, initially focused on school sport, sporting events and event photography.

The system must be scalable to support **hundreds of photographers, thousands of galleries and millions of images**.

## Core Requirements

### Photographer Platform

Approved photographers must have accounts where they can:

* Create events and galleries
* Bulk upload thousands of images
* Set pricing
* View sales, commission and payouts
* Manage public profiles
* View gallery and sales analytics

### Galleries & Events

Events must support multiple photographers, sports, teams, age groups and matches. Images remain linked to the photographer who uploaded them.

### AI Search

A major requirement is automated image search using:

* **Facial recognition/search**
* **Bib number recognition**
* **Jersey/player number recognition**
* OCR/computer vision
* Automatic AI image tagging

Customers should be able to upload a face, enter a number or use filters to quickly locate relevant photographs.

### Image Processing

The platform must support:

* High-volume uploads
* Cloud image storage
* Automatic thumbnails/previews
* Watermarking
* Secure high-resolution originals
* CDN delivery
* Background image/AI processing

### Marketplace & Payments

Customers must be able to purchase:

* High-resolution downloads
* Social-media versions
* Image bundles
* Free sponsor-branded downloads

Primary currency: **ZAR**.

The system must integrate with suitable SA payment gateways such as PayFast, Peach Payments, Paystack or equivalent.

PhotoX commission must be calculated automatically, with photographer earnings, refunds and payouts recorded.

### Sponsor System

Admin must be able to manage advertising across:

* Homepage
* Search results
* Galleries
* Image preview pages
* Emails

Including campaign scheduling, impressions, clicks and reporting.

### Admin

Central dashboard for:

* Photographers/users
* Events/galleries/images
* Orders/payments
* Commissions/payouts
* Sponsors/advertising
* Coupons/refunds
* Analytics

### Technical Requirements

The system must be:

* Mobile-first
* POPIA-aware
* Secure
* Cloud-based
* API-ready
* Designed for millions of images
* Built so additional services can be added later

## Phase 1 Flow

**Photographer → Event → Bulk Upload → AI Processing → Face/Bib/Jersey Search → Gallery → Customer Search → Checkout → Payment → Digital Delivery → Commission → Photographer Reporting**

## Quote Required

Please include:

* Development cost
* Development timeline
* Proposed technology stack
* AI/computer vision solution
* Cloud/storage/CDN architecture
* Payment architecture
* Third-party costs
* Estimated monthly hosting costs
* Support/maintenance options
* IP/source-code ownership

The objective is to build a scalable professional photography marketplace where thousands of images can be uploaded and customers can **find themselves in seconds**.