Ella
Fontenot
Selected work
Swelter Surf is a digital platform I designed and developed to connect surfers with high-quality surf photography. The platform supports two core functions: direct sale of existing surf media and the booking/management of private surf photography sessions. Built with secure payment protection, dual user portals (Surfer & Photographer), and cloud media storage with automatic watermarking.
- >Face detection with AWS Rekognition: a background worker finds the primary face in every upload and pins a preview badge on photos and videos, with seek-to-frame on video
- >Stripe integration with secure payment holding until deliverables are confirmed
- >Dual Backblaze storage buckets (watermarked previews + high-res deliverables)
- >Real-time booking flow with Accept/Counter/Decline workflow
- >Photographer portfolio and earnings dashboard with payout management
- >Surfer portal for purchases, session management, and deliverable downloads
- >48-hour pre-session chat activation between parties
- >Automated payment release with dispute handling system
Next.jsStripeBackblazeTypeScriptAWS Rekognition
↑ clicktap to go to sweltersurf.com
Co-founder & CTO
Whim is a location-based social app for meeting people at the places you already go. I built it from scratch in SwiftUI on Firebase and shipped it to the App Store, growing to 300+ beta users across Stanford and UCSC. Under the hood: real-time geofencing with CoreLocation, a dual-write Firestore schema for O(1) message queries, Apple and Google sign-in, and a venue-based feed with threaded posts and QR contact exchange.
- >Built production iOS app (156 Swift files, SwiftUI, MVVM, Firebase) from scratch; achieved 300+ beta users across Stanford and UCSC with full App Store deployment.
- >Designed Firestore schema using dual-write pattern for O(1) message queries with real-time snapshot listeners; implemented Apple Sign-In and Google OAuth.
- >Engineered real-time geofencing using CoreLocation with automatic presence tracking, configurable proximity detection, and push notifications for spontaneous venue-based connections.
- >Built location-based social feed (“Hub”) with threaded posts/replies, image uploads, and content moderation; plus QR-based contact exchange via CoreImage/AVFoundation.
- >Finalist Santa Cruz Launchpad; Foundess Hatch Accelerator W25; Alpha Startup Web Summit Vancouver ’25.
SwiftSwiftUIFirebaseMapKit↑ clicktap to see media (2)
During my 14-month internship at Go (Jun 2022 - Aug 2023), I contributed to an iOS car insurance app that was featured as Apple's App of the Day. Go's mission was 'Most accidents don't need to happen' - focused on accident prevention through smart routing technology. I worked across the full SwiftUI/UIKit stack, implementing custom half-sheet UI components, real-time location features, and user onboarding flows that helped drive user acquisition.
- >Redesigned roadside service UI with custom half-sheet menus using UISheetPresentationController
- >Built live compass widget displaying heading, location, and elevation data
- >Implemented location tracking for crash reporting with 360° video metadata
- >Created custom UIViewControllerRepresentable wrappers for SwiftUI sheet integration
- >Developed new sign-up flow featuring promotional discounts and Apple Pay integration
- >Debugged and deployed production updates to the App Store
- >App featured as Apple App Store 'App of the Day'
SwiftSwiftUIUIKitCoreLocation↑ clicktap to see media (6)
Full-stack web application with modern React architecture, real-time features, and responsive design.
ReactNext.jsTypeScriptRetrieval-Augmented Generation system enabling semantic search and context-aware responses powered by LLMs.
PythonLangChainVector DB