Photo Credit: Roger Tino Morales
During SXSW any journalist will tell you that there are a million and one things to cover in any given day. Knowing this I made it my mission to set out and capture moments around the festival that would be easily over looked.
With this in mind I had sought out to capture interviews, performances, and moments that I felt people would have loved to experience if given the chance. This is how I found myself working out a day where I could follow around the Chicago Instagram queen herself Elise Swopes also known as in the Instagram world @Swopes.
Her story all started with an iPhone and a knack for perspective with the camera on it. She started her account on Instagram around 2010, shortly after Instagram’s initial launched. Like all of us who took our first steps in this new land of Instagram, her photos consisted of selfies, pets, and food.
Then, gradually, Swopes’ Instagram account began to turn into something else completely. Her photos went from portrait shots of her meals to portrait shots of the city that almost made Chicago look like a ghost town. She began to experiment with different apps on her phone that lead her to coining her own style of cropping into different scenes spheres and animals that seemed out of place and meant to be at the same time.
Since then, Swopes account has gained over 150,000 devoted followers who all look to her account as daily inspiration. Her success in the Instagram community has became so big that large companies such as Nike and Samsung have sponsored flights out of Chicago for her to come and work on promotional campaigns for them.
When I heard that Swopes was going to be in SXSW while I would be down there I knew there had to be content created from this. It was my chance to finally show her 150 followers a side of the Instagram account profile they had never seen before.
The day started with me simply following her and her friends around. I wanted the interviews to be as casual as possible, reflecting how her photos on Instagram feel. They all seem so intimate as if she is wondering the city all by herself on a private exploration where it’s just her showing the world to her followers. To replicate that feeling I wanted to make part of the interview while we were on the go from place to place. Walking throughout eh mayhem that was 6th Street in Austin, Texas made that possible.
It was casual conversation that drove this entire video from beginning to end. While we stood in the crowd waiting for the Prince concert to start that night, she was invited to attend by Samsung, our interview simply started with a conversation. I had not plan it at all. It was as if I had pushed a button with one question and immediately the flood gates opened to Elise letting all she had in her mind out.
It was a fantastic opportunity to actually capture the artist in the moment, it was an inside look into capturing the new age artist of our generation. A new breed of artist that launches their careers through hashtags and social media. A new breed of artist whose career starts on the internet and that see’s no boundaries when almost everyone that can consume their art can because of the wonder that is internet.
Here is an perspective that required no filters because the magic of the picture was the simple and colorful personality that is Elise Swopes.