By: Prof. Yolanda Masnita Siagian *)
We keep this love in a photograph
We made these memories for ourselves
Where our eyes are never closing
A snippet of an Ed Sheeran song was echoing loudly in my head. It was Sunday morning, just after seven o’clock. The Sudirman-Thamrin area had transformed into a sea of people. Some were running, some were cycling, while others were simply taking a leisurely walk with their children.
Amid the crowd, there were always figures who were not taking part in the exercise: standing at the edge of the route, cameras hanging around their necks, their eyes scanning for anyone passing by with a sufficiently “Instagrammable” movement — flowing hair, a focused expression, or a broad smile while running.
They were not journalists. Nor were they photographers hired by event organisers. They were individuals who, within photography communities, are often referred to with a tone that is half-joking and half-critical: “street photographers for hire” or “CFD photographers”.
And, quietly, they have been operating one of the most fascinating — and at the same time controversial — business models to emerge from Indonesian public spaces in recent years.
A Simple Yet Effective Business Model
The business model itself is actually quite straightforward. Photographers position themselves at crowded locations: city parks, Car Free Day areas, jogging tracks, and tourist destinations that are consistently filled with visitors.
From there, they photograph anyone who passes by, without asking beforehand or engaging in any formal request for permission. After all, people who are running or taking selfies in front of a fountain are often unaware that they are being photographed by strangers.
The photographs are then uploaded, usually in low resolution or with watermarks, to Google Drive or dedicated websites. Information about the location, date, and time of the photo session is shared through their social media accounts, complete with links to folders containing hundreds or even thousands of images.
People who are curious — or who secretly hope that their faces have been captured by someone else’s camera — scroll through these folders one by one, searching for themselves among a sea of unfamiliar faces.
Once they find their photograph and feel that it looks “good”, they make a payment. Only after the transaction is completed is the high-resolution file sent, usually via WhatsApp or email.
Photographs that are not purchased? They are simply deleted after several weeks, making room for new collections from the next photography session.
Simple. Yet it is precisely this simplicity that contains an interesting lesson about how a market can be created.
In marketing management, there is a fundamental understanding that is often overlooked: markets do not always already exist, waiting to be discovered. Sometimes, a market is created first — and the need only emerges after the product has been placed directly in front of people.
The people who attend Car Free Day that morning are not looking for photographs of themselves. There is no intention to buy, no budget prepared, and no desire that initially comes from within.
However, the moment that photograph appears on their mobile phone screen, that desire is created instantly.
CFD photographers, in their own way, are practising one of the most classic principles of marketing: creating demand rather than waiting for demand to exist.
Creating a Need That Never Existed Before
This is where consumer behaviour studies — a branch of marketing management that examines why people make purchasing decisions — become relevant.
First, there is the element of scarcity. The photograph captures a single moment that cannot be recreated and will be deleted if it is not purchased quickly.
This principle has long been recognised in marketing psychology: limited-time products create a sense of urgency, encouraging people to make quick decisions without extensive rational consideration.
Just like an e-commerce notification saying “only two items left in stock”, a Google Drive folder that “will be deleted in one week” creates a similar psychological pressure.
Second, there is the desire for self-image and social validation.
Seeing oneself photographed by another person — especially with an attractive angle, soft morning lighting, and a sporting moment that appears carefully presented — provides a form of visual evidence that the healthy lifestyle one pursues is real and worthy of being displayed.
The photograph then becomes content for personal social media, serving as external validation of the image that someone wishes to portray.
Third, this phenomenon also takes advantage of impulsive buying, or spontaneous purchasing behaviour.
There was no initial intention to buy a photograph when someone left home for Car Free Day that morning. However, once they discovered an attractive photograph of themselves, the decision to purchase appeared instantly, driven by a momentary emotional response rather than careful planning.
Finally, there is a unique psychological form of sunk cost: because the photograph already exists and is connected to oneself, many people feel reluctant to let it go, even though they never requested it in the first place.
Marketers often describe this as a subtle form of the endowment effect — the tendency to value something more highly simply because it has become attached to us. In this case, because our own face appears in the photograph.
The combination of these four factors is what allows the “photograph first, offer later” business model to survive and even grow.
Looking further, this is actually a pattern that appears repeatedly across many other industries.
People do not wake up in the morning with a desire to buy bottled water until advertisements convince them that tap water may not be sufficiently hygienic.
People do not set aside money for life insurance until an agent explains risks they had never previously considered.
CFD photographers do something similar, only on a much smaller and more personal scale: they are not selling something people already want; they create that desire by placing visual evidence directly in front of potential buyers — their own faces, captured in their best moments, ready to be purchased before they have the chance to reconsider.
When Public Spaces Become Grey Areas
The issue is not photography in public spaces itself. That practice is generally considered legitimate and widely recognised as part of freedom of expression and documentation.
The real concern arises when someone’s photograph, including a recognisable image of their face, is immediately commercialised without obtaining consent from the person concerned beforehand.
Indonesia’s Personal Data Protection Law (Undang-Undang Perlindungan Data Pribadi or UU PDP) provides a new framework for addressing this issue. Under various interpretations of the UU PDP, a person’s face is considered personal data because it can be used to specifically identify an individual.
When such data is collected, distributed, and especially sold, consent from the data subject should ideally be obtained beforehand — not after the photograph has already been circulated and other people have had the opportunity to view, download, or even save screenshots of it.
This is where a shift in perspective has begun to emerge among digital law observers and photography communities: the old approach of “take the photograph first, sell it later” should move towards “obtain permission first, then take the photograph”.
Admittedly, this may sound inconvenient for small-scale photographers. However, the principle is aligned with the broader spirit of personal data protection, which has now become a global standard, not merely an issue in Indonesia.
The situation becomes even more complicated with the emergence of individuals who take advantage of public confusion regarding these regulations.
At Tebet Eco Park, for example, there were reports from visitors who were allegedly asked to pay a kind of “photography permission fee” by individuals claiming to have authority, even though such a requirement was not an official regulation from the park management.
These practices of unofficial charges disguised as “documentation permits” create another layer of problems: it is no longer only about consent for photography, but also about who actually has the authority to regulate public spaces and how legal grey areas can be exploited for personal gain.
Between Creativity, Livelihoods, and Privacy Rights
There is an important aspect that should not be overlooked: many CFD photographers are not large-scale entrepreneurs exploiting people solely for profit.
Some are beginner photographers, university students, or freelancers seeking additional income through a skill and hobby they have developed.
Their cameras and weekend free time are transformed into economic opportunities — something that, in many other contexts, is often praised as a form of creative entrepreneurship.
However, good intentions or economic necessity do not automatically remove another person’s right over their own face and personal image.
This is where the real dilemma lies: how can society balance an individual’s right to create and earn a living through photography with another person’s right to decide whether their image may be used as a commercial product?
Several solutions have begun to be explored within photography communities: placing notices in photography areas informing people that a photo session is taking place and that the images may be sold, providing an opt-out option for those who do not wish to be photographed, or obtaining brief verbal consent before pressing the shutter button.
These solutions are not perfect. However, they represent an important step towards shifting the practice from “secretly taking photographs and offering them afterwards” to a more transparent approach from the beginning.
Conclusion: A Market Born from Cameras and Moments
Looking more closely, CFD photographers are actually demonstrating an important lesson about marketing: markets are not always about finding people who already need something and then offering them a solution.
Sometimes, a market emerges from the courage to create a moment, place a product in front of people who do not even realise they might want it, and then allow human psychology — curiosity, social status, and the fear of missing out — to complete the process.
The problem is not creativity itself or the act of creating a market.
The real issue is that the foundation of this market is built upon the faces and images of other people, captured without prior permission.
As long as there are no clear and mutually agreed rules, this practice will continue to exist in a grey area — partly a clever business strategy, and partly a privacy violation that is tolerated because it is considered insignificant.
And as long as people remain easily tempted by seeing the best version of themselves captured in the soft morning light of Car Free Day, this market created from fleeting moments is unlikely to lose its appeal, regardless of how those photographs were originally taken.
Prof. Yolanda Masnita Siagian is the Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB) at Universitas Trisakti.
