Latest / The Photography & Video Show Podcast / 10: Elise Swopes on Instagram and NFTs, Fujifilm X100VI compact camera arrives, therapeutic photography with Gabrielle Motola

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10: Elise Swopes on Instagram and NFTs, Fujifilm X100VI compact camera arrives, therapeutic photography with Gabrielle Motola · The Photography & Video Show Podcast

• 0:10
  David McClelland: Hello, and welcome to the photography and video show podcast for March, 2024.
• 0:16
  David McClelland: I'm your host, David McClelland.
• 0:18
  David McClelland: And this month we talk about Fujifilm's new X 106, fixed lens camera, OpenAI's, text-to-video generator, Sora, and how photography can be therapy.
• 0:31
  David McClelland: We also speak with photographer and creator, Elise Swopes about Instagram and NFTs.
• 0:38
  Elise Swopes: It's really just about how can I add something to this image that I captured of a skyline, whether it was in a helicopter ride, or on the top of a building, then when I'm looking at them on my phone, I'm like, okay, I don't want to just post this image of this cityscape.
• 0:55
  Elise Swopes: I mean, it's beautiful, there's a lot of people who post cityscapes, but I want to add something I feel like would make this elevated.
• 1:02
  Elise Swopes: And so.
• 1:03
  Elise Swopes: That's why I started adding giraffes.
• 1:07
  David McClelland: And coming up later on, we also have some really exciting new news about the in-person photography and video show taking place between Saturday the 16th and Tuesday, the 19th of March, 2024 at the NEC in Birmingham, including an exclusive discount code for your last minute tickets.
• 1:26
  David McClelland: Before that joining us to muse over this month's news is photographer writer, colorist and therapeutic photography practitioner, Gabrielle Matola.
• 1:35
  Gabrielle Motola: Thanks for having me, David.
• 1:36
  Gabrielle Motola: It's a pleasure to be here.
• 1:38
  David McClelland: You have a lot of skills under your wing there, photographer, writer, colourist, as well as therapeutic photography practitioner, and I want to land on that when we chat later on, but how do you describe yourself?
• 1:51
  Gabrielle Motola: I guess as a photographer, most of the time, people like one word answers.
• 1:55
  Gabrielle Motola: But I, I suppose lately I'm, I'm definitely transitioning into a therapeutic photography practitioner, more in the sense that I'm helping to enable other people to practice it, by showing them what I do.
• 2:07
  David McClelland: In terms of the photography that you do, just looking at your work on your website, on your Instagram, it seems as though photography, street photography, are very much at the heart of a lot of your work.
• 2:20
  Gabrielle Motola: Yeah, like a lot of people, I started out photographing, landscapes and objects because people really intimidated me, even people I knew, even though I was really fascinated, I am really fascinated with people.
• 2:31
  Gabrielle Motola: I did psychology undergraduate as well as a motion picture degree and came to photography.
• 2:37
  Gabrielle Motola: So the street portraiture I do is a really great way for me to kind of stay in shape as a photographer.
• 2:41
  Gabrielle Motola: I like to think about it.
• 2:43
  Gabrielle Motola: I've also been on tour with musicians.
• 2:44
  Gabrielle Motola: I've, um, I do a lot of landscape work.
• 2:47
  Gabrielle Motola: I've done two major solo motorcycle journeys, one to Iceland and back from England and, uh, one up in Scotland all the way around the Hebrides and the Orkney islands, and I just do a lot of meditative landscape work.
• 3:00
  David McClelland: Right, let's have a look at this month's news and, well, February 2024 was a big month for Fujifilm with the X100VI, launch.
• 3:11
  David McClelland: Now, pre orders for this were off the charts.
• 3:14
  David McClelland: I've seen numbers in the region of about half a million and such is the demand that scalpers- those people who will buy whatever it is they can and then sell them with a huge markup-well, they have been active selling units for as much as twice their retail price So what is the camera?
• 3:30
  David McClelland: Well, it's a follow up to the hugely successful X 105 or V.
• 3:35
  David McClelland: The Roman numerals are all over the place here, Fujifilm.
• 3:38
  David McClelland: X 100 V is what people tend to call it, but then we are meant to be calling this the X 106 or vi.
• 3:44
  David McClelland: Anyway, what is it?
• 3:45
  David McClelland: It's a retro styled premium compact camera that's become very much a street photography favourite.
• 3:52
  David McClelland: in terms of some specs, it's got a 40.
• 3:55
  David McClelland: 2 megapixel sensor, which is up from the 26.
• 3:58
  David McClelland: 1 in the V.
• 3:59
  David McClelland: It's got a fixed lens, 35mm f/2, which is the same as the previous model, I think.
• 4:05
  David McClelland: But you can, I've seen, buy a teleconverter and a wide angled adapter that you can screw into the front.
• 4:11
  David McClelland: That look.
• 4:11
  David McClelland: very useful indeed.
• 4:12
  David McClelland: Uh, this time around, also new as well is the inbuilt image stabilisation, the IBIS, up to six stops of correction.
• 4:20
  David McClelland: I think that depends upon what viewfinder mode you have on there.
• 4:23
  David McClelland: Again, with the street photography angle here, great for that, great for low light stuff.
• 4:27
  David McClelland: But I think all the specs only really tell part of the story and why this has been such a popular camera is that people love the look, this filmic 35mm look, the recipes, these Fujifilm simulations and the ability to share these recipes online with others.
• 4:44
  David McClelland: Not unique to the X 100 line, but something that's certainly drawn a crowd on TikTok, it seems It's actually got the same sensor that's used on some other models, including the XT five and the XH two.
• 4:55
  David McClelland: It's got a, a new processor as well.
• 4:58
  David McClelland: Great auto focus.
• 5:00
  David McClelland: And if a particular note here as well is the C2C or camera to cloud, which means the camera can, when it's connected to a Wi-Fi network upload your clips, your photos, your stills to the cloud, or specifically to Frame.io, which Adobe bought two or three years ago.
• 5:17
  David McClelland: Now, honestly, I didn't even know that Frame.io could handle still images.
• 5:22
  David McClelland: I use Frame.io all the time for video projects, sharing them with clients and getting feedback.
• 5:26
  David McClelland: I didn't realize that it could do still images.
• 5:29
  David McClelland: There's lots more to talk about with the camera, but I'll press pause for there.
• 5:32
  David McClelland: I know lots of colleagues have had some hands on time with this.
• 5:35
  David McClelland: And can't say for certain, but I would be really, really surprised if there wasn't an opportunity to get hands on with this camera on the Fujifilm stand at The Photography and Video Show in a couple of weeks time.
• 5:47
  David McClelland: But Gabrielle, street photography, street portraiture, do you have a preferred camera or lens combo for this type of work?
• 5:56
  Gabrielle Motola: Yeah, for the street portraits at the moment, I'm on the X T5.
• 5:59
  Gabrielle Motola: I was on the X Pro3.
• 6:01
  Gabrielle Motola: Um, and I use their 35mm 1.
• 6:04
  Gabrielle Motola: 2 lens, which is the 50mm equivalent.
• 6:06
  Gabrielle Motola: I tend to use that for portraits.
• 6:08
  Gabrielle Motola: Uh, yesterday I was on the 23mm 1.
• 6:10
  Gabrielle Motola: 2, which is a 35mm lens.
• 6:13
  Gabrielle Motola: And honestly, man, you're selling me this, this X100VI if I could get my hands on it.
• 6:18
  Gabrielle Motola: But, um, it wouldn't be my camera of choice.
• 6:20
  Gabrielle Motola: But, I mean, it's certainly with the, uh, the same sensor and, all the features, how small it is.
• 6:26
  Gabrielle Motola: I mean, I think it would make any, any street photographer's kit complete, pretty much, in and of itself, especially with the converters.
• 6:32
  Gabrielle Motola: but I, I like to work closer to people and I generally, generally really like their, I usually go for face.
• 6:37
  Gabrielle Motola: If I'm doing more of an environmental portrait, I'll use a 35 equivalent.
• 6:42
  Gabrielle Motola: I tend to like the slight compression you get with a 50.
• 6:45
  Gabrielle Motola: You get a little bit more of the background thrown out of focus at the, at the more open apertures I usually shoot around f1.
• 6:52
  Gabrielle Motola: 8, F2, even though it's a 1.2, uh, just, that's just to get the focus straight through.
• 6:57
  Gabrielle Motola: So I don't wind up getting the nose and not the eye or vice versa.
• 7:00
  David McClelland: the, C2C, the camera to cloud thing, is something we're also seeing popping up on an increasing number of cameras, and that's something which, uh, well, you tell me, in a way.
• 7:11
  David McClelland: Is that something that you would find working its way into your workflow?
• 7:15
  Gabrielle Motola: So the thing I would say is yeah, because, um, I know it only has one card slot at the moment, maybe they'll bring that out with the 7, it would be useful in backing up and also, um, it could open up other areas of, potential with sharing.
• 7:28
  Gabrielle Motola: Like you said, you share with your video clients, projects and get comments.
• 7:32
  Gabrielle Motola: Yeah, I'm also a Frame.io person for video, because as you said at the beginning of the show, colorist.
• 7:36
  Gabrielle Motola: So I, my background is in cinema.
• 7:39
  Gabrielle Motola: So I was an editor for years, and then I became a colorist.
• 7:41
  Gabrielle Motola: My specialty is making quote unquote recipes, as they call them, for, for photographs.
• 7:46
  Gabrielle Motola: I grade everything I shoot.
• 7:48
  Gabrielle Motola: and I know Fuji is great for one of the reasons I think it's so popular amongst, amateur and hobbyist photographers.
• 7:55
  Gabrielle Motola: And when I say amateur, I mean people who do it for the love of it.
• 7:57
  Gabrielle Motola: I don't think that amateur should be a pejorative word, ever.
• 8:00
  Gabrielle Motola: professional just means you earn money from it, and that doesn't make you a better photographer, necessarily.
• 8:05
  Gabrielle Motola: but all of the color science that came out of, like, Fuji's film world, all of those scientists, as far as I understand it, a lot of them were ported over, and they worked on the color science on the cameras.
• 8:15
  Gabrielle Motola: So they do have really great rendition of color.
• 8:19
  Gabrielle Motola: in their JPEGs that are produced.
• 8:20
  Gabrielle Motola: And for a lot of photographers, it's enough to just have a JPEG and it's finished.
• 8:24
  Gabrielle Motola: They don't need to have a raw file and grade it the way I do.
• 8:27
  Gabrielle Motola: Um, and I have programmed my X T5 to have different recipes to get inspired when I'm shooting, if I'm shooting raw and JPEG in tandem, I tend to just shoot raw these days though.
• 8:38
  Gabrielle Motola: I've seen a lot of images that work really well, where the color has been applied in a thoughtful manner and it serves the image.
• 8:44
  Gabrielle Motola: And then I see a lot of, an awful lot of stuff that's just kind of, thwacked on there for the effect, but it doesn't really necessarily serve the image.
• 8:51
  Gabrielle Motola: So there, there's behind every recipe, there's still somebody.
• 8:54
  Gabrielle Motola: God, for want of a better word, a chef that whose taste is dictating which recipe they use for which image and, and, and what style of photography they're doing, but yeah, all around it's an exciting camera for sure.
• 9:06
  David McClelland: Super stuff.
• 9:07
  David McClelland: So, the other new story that's really been garnering attention this month is OpenAI.
• 9:13
  David McClelland: So yes, it's another AI story, but away from the still image creation is the video generation.
• 9:20
  David McClelland: And this is OpenAI's Sora, Sora, Sora, which is you type in a handful of words and it will create a video.
• 9:29
  David McClelland: Short, up to how many seconds?
• 9:30
  David McClelland: 60 seconds, maybe?
• 9:32
  David McClelland: Uh, video sequence, including those.
• 9:34
  David McClelland: Now, when this landed, when it was announced earlier this month, and it is still in very much a kind of closed access program at the moment, but the internet went pretty wild.
• 9:44
  David McClelland: I posted a link to a story on my LinkedIn and wow, the comments got pretty spicy pretty soon in there with a number of responses in terms of how they felt as though creativity was being stifled, other people going, no, this is really exciting in terms of pre visualisation for sequences and so on, and then another group of people who were really concerned from a, ethical standpoint, which also leads into a practical standpoint, about the sources of the data, the training data for these large generative AI models, essentially scraping artists who've spent their time, spent their money, making their living from creating these works, having them scraped for free is the allegation, and there are some court cases around this as well, it should be said, in order to create this generative AI output.
• 10:33
  David McClelland: So there's a lot of different lenses on this type of work.
• 10:37
  David McClelland: Gabrielle, I'm, I'm curious as to where you sit on the AI fence, or indeed either side of the AI fence
• 10:44
  Gabrielle Motola: I mean, the, the visual that comes to mind is I don't really sit on either side of the fence or even on the fence.
• 10:50
  Gabrielle Motola: I'm on a swing.
• 10:51
  Gabrielle Motola: Um, I'm just.
• 10:52
  David McClelland: Yes,
• 10:53
  Gabrielle Motola: I'm kind of, you know, I'm observing, I absolutely acknowledge the, like, the whole copyright issue, the massive infringement that's occurred, with a lot of images, and pretty much everything that's ever been created being, referenced, literally, like, not just referenced in the way that I see something and I put it into a painting, but there is an argument for that that's kind of, done.
• 11:16
  Gabrielle Motola: But I, I'm interested in what it can do because as a film student coming up, um, when I was, you know, I was like, what, 17, 18, I was way too socially anxious to get on with, um, making, um, films with people.
• 11:29
  Gabrielle Motola: Uh, you have film as a collaborative medium and I found it very difficult to come out of myself and communicate my ideas.
• 11:36
  Gabrielle Motola: And just logistically, like getting from a to B it's incredibly hard to make film, It's very expensive.
• 11:43
  Gabrielle Motola: To be able to sit down in a coffee shop and just sort of type in a bunch of texts and create a moving visual, to me, it's exciting.
• 11:51
  Gabrielle Motola: I really wish there was a way that was simple enough to work out how to renumerate people for their work that, was taken without consent for these models that are commercial.
• 12:01
  Gabrielle Motola: I don't use AI in commercial work.
• 12:04
  Gabrielle Motola: I can only offer opinions.
• 12:05
  Gabrielle Motola: I think there's so much going on and it's moving so quickly that I don't have a fixed point of view.
• 12:10
  Gabrielle Motola: What I, do see a lot of that troubles me is a lot of people simply not exploring anything, shutting down and just repeating the rhetoric that's out there of AI is going to destroy the world.
• 12:19
  Gabrielle Motola: And I, I understand people are fearful for their jobs and their security.
• 12:23
  Gabrielle Motola: And that's real.
• 12:23
  Gabrielle Motola: And that fear contributes to a lot of the spiciness that's out there.
• 12:27
  Gabrielle Motola: I'm not on board with Sora, like I haven't tried a beta or anything.
• 12:31
  Gabrielle Motola: But it is, it is exciting what you can do.
• 12:33
  Gabrielle Motola: And I use prompting all the time for research and writing and also in sorts of heavy lifting when I'm using Gemini, which was barred or chat GPT.
• 12:42
  David McClelland: So in the, text generation world, this is something you are already well invested in, already getting good utility out of at the moment.
• 12:50
  Gabrielle Motola: Oh my God, it saves me so much time.
• 12:52
  Gabrielle Motola: I find, being able to bounce ideas off of an AI chatbot.
• 12:56
  Gabrielle Motola: Again, it's always coming down to the choice I make and the taste that I have and what I think.
• 13:01
  Gabrielle Motola: I never put something into a chatbot and then just use that.
• 13:06
  Gabrielle Motola: I'm always reading every single word and honing it and changing it and manipulating it and double checking information if I'm doing research.
• 13:14
  Gabrielle Motola: Um, it just gives me, sometimes it just throws up really interesting things that I hadn't thought of.
• 13:19
  David McClelland: but this is the essence of creativity being at times a collaborative process and you speak about filmmaking being a collaborative process and as a as a writer in the past myself that conversation that collaboration you have with an editor is invaluable, but we don't always have the benefit of that, and that is a luxury that is afforded us less and less.
• 13:41
  David McClelland: But the ability through tools like a ChatGPT, like a, a co pilot, which is Microsoft's broader term for its AI assistance, but actually I think it's a very smart term because it really sets out, it really defines the role as well as the name of the AI assistant there.
• 13:59
  David McClelland: You are working on something together.
• 14:02
  David McClelland: Ultimately, you as the pilot are in charge, and to your point, the stuff that comes out is your decision, it's your vision at the end.
• 14:09
  David McClelland: But you have a co pilot who can also do some of the heavy lifting So I think it really brings some collaboration, some conversation, that we might, as solo creatives all too often, otherwise miss.
• 14:23
  David McClelland: I would love to have a brief chat with you about your work as a therapeutic photography practitioner, Who is it for and how does it work?
• 14:32
  Gabrielle Motola: All art is inherently therapeutic to some extent, and I don't mean the kind of therapeutic where you're sitting on a couch talking about your childhood or your feelings.
• 14:39
  Gabrielle Motola: I mean, that's valid.
• 14:40
  Gabrielle Motola: Talk therapy I've done tons of, And it's great for becoming aware of your story, but sometimes you can get stuck in those stories.
• 14:48
  Gabrielle Motola: Well, therapeutic photography, is the active engagement with photography for personal exploration, healing, and growth.
• 14:53
  Gabrielle Motola: You know, whether you do it by yourself or with somebody guiding you.
• 14:57
  Gabrielle Motola: I started making Portraits of Strangers on a daily basis in 2018 or 2019.
• 15:02
  Gabrielle Motola: And I did it to challenge myself to get out of the house, to get out of my head.
• 15:07
  Gabrielle Motola: I did it because I had, I am somebody who has suffered from long periods of depression and extreme anxiety.
• 15:14
  Gabrielle Motola: I definitely experienced anxiety around people but mostly it came out of a curiosity and a desire to photograph people because I just, I, I absolutely am fascinated by the human form, the face figure, you know, observing others,
• 15:29
  David McClelland: Uh, Uh,
• 15:31
  Gabrielle Motola: the working of the mind, which is psychology.
• 15:34
  Gabrielle Motola: It's a science of the mind and how it works.
• 15:36
  Gabrielle Motola: Photography of other people is a really useful reflective tool for me to think about how I think, feel, and react to other people.
• 15:44
  Gabrielle Motola: And what that says about myself and my relationship with myself, because ultimately that is the biggest tool I possess as a photographer, as a person in my life to do anything I want to do.
• 15:55
  Gabrielle Motola: to work with that anxiety or that fear of others is, A challenge that helps me open up, avenues of access in everything in life, just, not just photography.
• 16:06
  Gabrielle Motola: But just being able to go out into the street and feel like you could speak to anybody, ask anybody anything you need, is an incredibly empowering feeling that makes me feel much more connected to the world around me.
• 16:17
  Gabrielle Motola: And to myself.
• 16:18
  Gabrielle Motola: So, the kind of therapeutic photography I practice at the moment is street portraiture.
• 16:23
  Gabrielle Motola: I do a workshop about, um, once or twice a month where I take a small group of people out.
• 16:28
  Gabrielle Motola: And we explore, this practice and I've like a whole structure, I've gotten it pretty down.
• 16:34
  Gabrielle Motola: But I'm also developing other workshops that help people engage with themselves in the world and deal with their fears and their anxieties and their self talk is a big thing.
• 16:46
  Gabrielle Motola: How you react to making a picture.
• 16:49
  Gabrielle Motola: I think has a huge, impact on your learning process.
• 16:53
  Gabrielle Motola: How enjoyable you find it.
• 16:55
  Gabrielle Motola: we do a lot of work on self reflection, self talk, how we speak to ourselves.
• 16:59
  Gabrielle Motola: And we always say to everybody, be kind.
• 17:02
  Gabrielle Motola: But really, you need to be kind to yourself in order to be kind to others.
• 17:05
  Gabrielle Motola: And, you know, but how do you do that?
• 17:08
  Gabrielle Motola: Um, so we work a lot with positive reinforcement.
• 17:11
  Gabrielle Motola: What I love about it is that it's photo forward, it's photography forward.
• 17:15
  Gabrielle Motola: We're working with photography.
• 17:17
  Gabrielle Motola: We're not really working with therapy, if that makes sense.
• 17:20
  Gabrielle Motola: But we're, in order to work on our photography, we have to work on a lot of cognitive skills and emotional skills that are therapeutic.
• 17:28
  Gabrielle Motola: They're, they're what we work on in therapy, like mood regulation and self talk and self criticism.
• 17:33
  Gabrielle Motola: And, you know, it is an act of courage to go out into the street.
• 17:37
  Gabrielle Motola: And ask somebody to make a picture of them or even just compliment somebody on shoes that you like, you know, we, we, we hear that we, I'm sure we're out there all the time with or without cameras.
• 17:48
  Gabrielle Motola: And, and we're afraid we want to say these things, but we stop ourselves and that makes us feel bad about ourselves because you know, we haven't been able to overcome that fear.
• 17:57
  Gabrielle Motola: So it's an act of bravery and courage to go out and do that in spite of your fear.
• 18:02
  Gabrielle Motola: It doesn't mean that you don't have fear.
• 18:04
  Gabrielle Motola: It's not like I don't have fear.
• 18:05
  Gabrielle Motola: I have plenty of it.
• 18:06
  Gabrielle Motola: I'm learning how to handle my fear and work with it so that it's there.
• 18:10
  Gabrielle Motola: It's an informer, but it's not driving.
• 18:13
  Gabrielle Motola: It's not in the, it's not in the pilot seat.
• 18:16
  David McClelland: There are lots of parallels here from my experience of this area through my wife who works as an arts therapist and she's brought skills from a career she's also worked in to bear in the therapeutic space, often with young people, neurodivergence, autism spectrum disorder, for example, and using play, using drama, sometimes just using conversation, frankly, Um, to help those people to help them address whatever whatever challenges they've got going on.
• 18:50
  David McClelland: Let's press pause here for a moment though and switch over to this month's feature interview.
• 18:59
  David McClelland: At least Swope sees an artist photographer and creator for the internet age.
• 19:04
  David McClelland: From her emergence is one of the earliest Instagram stars in the early 20 teens to her influential work in front of, and behind the camera in the early 2020s swipes his work leans into creative social, and even technical frontiers.
• 19:22
  Elise Swopes: Well, my work, I would say, is surrealistic, more than anything.
• 19:27
  Elise Swopes: I'm always kind of adding strange things to negative space I think surreal kind of encompasses, but then again, it's not so much that I just do surrealism in one sense.
• 19:39
  Elise Swopes: I also do illustration.
• 19:40
  Elise Swopes: I do, photography.
• 19:42
  Elise Swopes: I do graphic design.
• 19:43
  Elise Swopes: I do, video as well that is surreal.
• 19:48
  Elise Swopes: So I'll just navigate the real world and, and my own kind of spin.
• 19:52
  David McClelland: So in that case, and this is a double edged question in a way, what do you call yourself?
• 19:59
  David McClelland: Because you make photographs, you make images, you make animations, you make videos, you make all kinds of things.
• 20:07
  David McClelland: Is there a, is there a name how you describe your role in creating that work, a creator, a digital artist, or do you prefer not to have that, those boundaries?
• 20:18
  Elise Swopes: You know, I know a lot of people do have those boundaries.
• 20:21
  Elise Swopes: They're very offended by the word influencer or content creator or things like that.
• 20:26
  Elise Swopes: I don't really mind at all.
• 20:28
  Elise Swopes: Whatever people want to call me that dictates my creativity is the best for me.
• 20:34
  Elise Swopes: But for me personally, I think visual storyteller is a favourite.
• 20:38
  Elise Swopes: Um, something I've kind of come up on is just, I'm always willing to kind of tell a story, whether that's through a still image or, uh, you know, a video.
• 20:47
  David McClelland: So, looking at some of your work, SuperRare is a website, and we'll come back to that as a platform later on.
• 20:53
  David McClelland: I see that your work, it ticks so many of my boxes, it fuses urban architectures and nature, Chicago, which I think is your home city.
• 21:04
  David McClelland: It really features heavily in a lot of certainly a most recent work.
• 21:08
  David McClelland: So one of the works I'm looking at here is, The River Is Everywhere, for example, and I can see that Chicago skyline with the Sears Tower, although I think it's called the Willis Tower now, isn't it?
• 21:20
  David McClelland: That's on the left.
• 21:20
  David McClelland: I can see this water, which I understand is Niagara Falls, cascading across the other buildings.
• 21:28
  David McClelland: It's, it's compelling, it's Hyper real, yet surreal, another one of your works, which does similar things, Such Great Heights.
• 21:38
  David McClelland: It's this giraffe that you've placed inside the observation deck in the same Willis Tower.
• 21:44
  David McClelland: I love them both.
• 21:45
  David McClelland: What's your process from a, a meaning point of view?
• 21:50
  David McClelland: I mean, there's lots that I take away from, from these, but also from a technical point of view, because the other thing here is that, I believe, these were shot on iPhone.
• 21:59
  Elise Swopes: Absolutely.
• 22:00
  Elise Swopes: They were shot and edited.
• 22:02
  Elise Swopes: honestly, I think at the end of the day, for me, it's really just about how beautiful the piece is.
• 22:09
  Elise Swopes: It's like the first step, like how is it look, um, composition wise, you know, is it balanced?
• 22:15
  Elise Swopes: Is, is there a flow, um, is there a way that you, you kind of want to look and ask questions about it?
• 22:23
  Elise Swopes: I guess subconsciously there's a lot of different things too that are interesting to me.
• 22:29
  Elise Swopes: Um, obviously there's just a lot of water and, and flow and maybe there's something to say about, you know, the environment or, you know, I don't know, global warming of a sort.
• 22:40
  Elise Swopes: Um, but to me personally that when I'm going into make it, it's not what I'm thinking.
• 22:45
  Elise Swopes: You know, it's really just about how.
• 22:48
  Elise Swopes: Can I add something to this image that I captured of a skyline, whether it was in a helicopter ride, or I'm on the top of a building, or I'm inside of a building, looking outside of a window, usually is how I capture these, these, uh, landscape shots, but then when I'm looking at them on my phone, I'm like, okay, I don't want to just post this image of this cityscape.
• 23:14
  Elise Swopes: Great.
• 23:14
  Elise Swopes: I mean, it's beautiful, you know, and there's a lot of people who post cityscapes, but I want to add something that I feel like would kind of make this elevated.
• 23:24
  Elise Swopes: And so.
• 23:25
  Elise Swopes: You know, that's why I started adding giraffes.
• 23:27
  Elise Swopes: And that's why I started um, waterfalls.
• 23:30
  Elise Swopes: And that's why I started adding different moons and making them wavy and all this different type of stuff.
• 23:35
  Elise Swopes: I think I was just trying to see the world at a different angle versus just delivering it to in the same way we see regularly.
• 23:44
  David McClelland: The other part of that is, shot on an iPhone.
• 23:48
  David McClelland: the, the quality, the, the hyper realism almost.
• 23:51
  David McClelland: belies the fact that it was shot on iPhone.
• 23:53
  David McClelland: And now, don't get me wrong, I do a lot of work as a smartphone photographer myself.
• 23:58
  David McClelland: I don't mean to denigrate the quality of the image, but I look at that and I go, wow, that's really, really impressive.
• 24:03
  David McClelland: Even knowing the quality that a smartphone camera can create.
• 24:06
  David McClelland: The other thing here, of course, looking at the river is everywhere, that is an animation.
• 24:10
  David McClelland: We've got this water, I say it's cascading, I'm looking at it on the SuperRare website right now.
• 24:16
  David McClelland: That water just keeps on cascading there.
• 24:18
  David McClelland: So just from a technical point of view, can you just peel back the curtain a little bit?
• 24:22
  David McClelland: I know you do of, of training, a lot of masterclasses in this area to what your process is to, to creating this, this output.
• 24:30
  Elise Swopes: Well, the first step to a piece like The River Everywhere, you would have to first take the photo.
• 24:37
  Elise Swopes: So I love getting in a helicopter ride every other year.
• 24:41
  Elise Swopes: Um, to with the doors open, I'll have my phone attached to my neck.
• 24:46
  Elise Swopes: My eyes will be like watering because the wind is shooting me in all directions.
• 24:51
  Elise Swopes: And I'll sometimes go out during the winter.
• 24:52
  Elise Swopes: I'll go to the summer, I'll go out to the fall, like anytime I'll go in the morning, I'll go at night just because the light's different, you know, I'll go through sunset, sunrise, like it really, like you can't have enough, you know, helicopter rides.
• 25:05
  Elise Swopes: So that's my first step.
• 25:06
  Elise Swopes: And then I have, that kind of allows me to kind of have like a storage, so to speak of inspiration at all times.
• 25:12
  Elise Swopes: So I can just create whenever.
• 25:14
  Elise Swopes: Anytime I feel like it's, I'll pull a piece, pull an image.
• 25:18
  Elise Swopes: And this is one of those from Chicago.
• 25:20
  Elise Swopes: Um, one of my favorite images.
• 25:22
  Elise Swopes: And, then of course I'll use like a stock image.
• 25:26
  Elise Swopes: Cause I haven't been to Niagara falls yet.
• 25:28
  Elise Swopes: And this is one thing I love about the unlimited.
• 25:31
  Elise Swopes: things that I encounter in my life based on the limitations that I've, had on myself, which is that I was a broke college dropout when I started creating.
• 25:41
  Elise Swopes: And that's why I started creating on my phone.
• 25:44
  Elise Swopes: Um, and that in the sense that, you know, just cause I haven't been somewhere, it doesn't mean that I can't utilize it in some way.
• 25:50
  Elise Swopes: So that's why I appreciate Adobe Stock because I would download images and then I would be able to edit them with different apps on my phone and I would be able to mask, cut out, place all these different things.
• 26:00
  Elise Swopes: And the thing to me about like making sure that these images that I create and that these different stock images that I use match is that I have to download and utilize every single one to the point where like, I'm spending so much money buying people's stock images that I don't even use.
• 26:17
  Elise Swopes: So I have like folders and folders and folders of tons and tons and tons of waterfalls from everywhere around the world, not just Niagara falls, but like everywhere.
• 26:26
  Elise Swopes: And so this one, I eventually like was placing them all on top of this image and, and found, a way that it kind of matched like in the perspective and the angle.
• 26:38
  Elise Swopes: And I think that's the most important thing to me is just making sure that the perspective matches.
• 26:43
  Elise Swopes: So cutting out the pieces, cutting out different buildings.
• 26:46
  Elise Swopes: And then there's another app, that I use where I can like.
• 26:50
  Elise Swopes: Mask out, certain pieces and then create these types of, arrows where they flow in the direction of the pixels.
• 26:58
  Elise Swopes: so from there, that'll allow me to make it move.
• 27:01
  Elise Swopes: it sounds really easy, but it's very, very hard.
• 27:03
  Elise Swopes: It's taken me years to really master.
• 27:05
  Elise Swopes: And, uh, here it is.
• 27:07
  David McClelland: we'll, put a link to this image and some others that we're talking about in the show notes for the show.
• 27:13
  David McClelland: So if you are listening or if you're on your mobile, then do tap through the description.
• 27:17
  David McClelland: Take a look at the images because they are, like I say, captivating, compelling, creative, surreal.
• 27:23
  David McClelland: And I should say you mentioned something there as well.
• 27:25
  David McClelland: Adobe Stock Adobe is a company that you do an awful lot of work with.
• 27:30
  Elise Swopes: Yeah, I mean, Adobe has been my ride or die for a minute.
• 27:34
  Elise Swopes: I love Adobe.
• 27:35
  Elise Swopes: And now that I'm an employee, it's even more exciting cause
• 27:38
  David McClelland: You're an employee now.
• 27:40
  Elise Swopes: I'm an employee of Adobe.
• 27:43
  David McClelland: Wow.
• 27:43
  David McClelland: Okay.
• 27:44
  David McClelland: So what sort of stuff do you do with them?
• 27:45
  Elise Swopes: I am a senior community relationship manager and an evangelist for Adobe Express.
• 27:51
  David McClelland: Adobe Express, which has been a very exciting, platform, I mean, very much angled towards the type of work that you speak about in terms of mobile workflows and mobile first content.
• 28:01
  Elise Swopes: Absolutely.
• 28:02
  Elise Swopes: I'm very proud to work on it.
• 28:03
  Elise Swopes: It's an amazing experience so far.
• 28:06
  David McClelland: Adobe will be at The Photography and Video Show in a couple of weeks time for the first time in a few years.
• 28:13
  David McClelland: I'm very excited to see, particularly given all the announcements, all the new features that have been appearing across their product set over the last year or two.
• 28:23
  David McClelland: Very excited to see what they're able to bring to the show this year.
• 28:26
  David McClelland: So, Swopes.
• 28:29
  David McClelland: I want to take you back maybe 10 years, maybe a little bit longer, and just understand your influences.
• 28:35
  David McClelland: Clearly, Chicago is an important place for you.
• 28:39
  David McClelland: It's certainly where you are still bringing a lot of images that you've seen as you've been growing up, and now you've moved on.
• 28:46
  David McClelland: To another city, to New York, you still are brought back to Chicago with your work.
• 28:51
  David McClelland: Tell me about your journey to the point right now.
• 28:55
  Elise Swopes: I'd say the work that I create has always been a response to something that I'm going through.
• 29:03
  Elise Swopes: Um, for example, because I'm, I'm in web three, I have a web three impact agency called Sunrise and Sunrise is focused on creating impactful experiences for artists in web three, but it's entirely based on the sunrise photos that I captured for three years straight.
• 29:21
  Elise Swopes: While waking up at 5am every day to meditate, to read, to write, to really work out and kind of make sure that my, my health is, and my mental health is really good to show up for other people, you know, especially being a content creator with, being so front facing with a lot of followers for a very long time.
• 29:40
  Elise Swopes: It's,
• 29:40
  David McClelland: A
• 29:40
  Elise Swopes: it's not that, I mean, it's hard when you're young, you know, and, and especially going through many changes.
• 29:47
  Elise Swopes: And so I kind of grew up on the internet in some way.
• 29:50
  Elise Swopes: And that's also what my TEDx is about.
• 29:52
  Elise Swopes: I did a TEDx at the University of Urbana Champaign, and it's called Child of the Internet.
• 29:58
  Elise Swopes: I've failed and I've succeeded you know, throughout the internet.
• 30:01
  Elise Swopes: So all of those experiences kind of tie into the reason why I create the things I create.
• 30:06
  Elise Swopes: For example, Sunrise Art Club is because those sunrises are based on the concept that putting health first no matter what's going on, especially digitally, is very important because the stuff that will leave you, you know, it'll move on without you.
• 30:21
  Elise Swopes: And you have to put yourself first and your health first, your physical health and your mental and your spiritual for sure.
• 30:26
  David McClelland: Successes, failures, our art, our output reflecting where we are at any given moment.
• 30:32
  David McClelland: Tell me about Instagram.
• 30:34
  David McClelland: Instagram has certainly been a success.
• 30:36
  David McClelland: because you were really there very much at the beginning of Instagram's journey.
• 30:41
  David McClelland: And would you say that was also part of the beginning of your journey as well?
• 30:45
  Elise Swopes: Yeah.
• 30:46
  Elise Swopes: I mean, a hundred percent.
• 30:47
  Elise Swopes: I think my journey definitely started on Instagram.
• 30:50
  Elise Swopes: Granted, it probably started on MySpace or maybe on, uh, Zynga or something that, but, um.
• 30:58
  David McClelland: We're showing our age now, I think.
• 31:00
  Elise Swopes: I, Oh, a hundred percent.
• 31:01
  Elise Swopes: I'm very happy about that.
• 31:04
  Elise Swopes: Cause I mean, people don't know we went through a lot.
• 31:06
  Elise Swopes: I mean, I was able to really customize my profile and I was sell profile layouts to people for money and school when I was in middle school.
• 31:15
  Elise Swopes: So I was, I was really like creating a business for myself.
• 31:18
  Elise Swopes: really was no surprise when Instagram came around and I was, you know.
• 31:23
  Elise Swopes: didn't really, really want to be in class.
• 31:25
  Elise Swopes: You know, I think everyone was asking me, what do you want to do?
• 31:28
  Elise Swopes: Where do you want to be?
• 31:29
  Elise Swopes: And I'm like, I don't know.
• 31:29
  Elise Swopes: I just want to be out.
• 31:31
  Elise Swopes: I just want to be outside.
• 31:31
  Elise Swopes: I just want to meet people.
• 31:32
  Elise Swopes: I just want to do stuff.
• 31:33
  Elise Swopes: I just want to at that time I didn't realize what I was doing, but I, I just wanted to learn life.
• 31:38
  Elise Swopes: I wanted to experience and dive in first.
• 31:41
  Elise Swopes: And that's really what happened.
• 31:42
  Elise Swopes: And so, I got, an iPhone 4, that was my ticket to the world.
• 31:48
  Elise Swopes: I was able download free apps and, you know, social media.
• 31:52
  Elise Swopes: And I was able to finally, you know, talk to people more.
• 31:54
  Elise Swopes: And then I found different apps on there where I could create and edit photos.
• 31:59
  Elise Swopes: And I was like, okay, this is kind of cool.
• 32:01
  Elise Swopes: And then I would take photos of like my friends and I'll take pictures of like cityscapes.
• 32:05
  Elise Swopes: And people would always ask me like, what are you doing?
• 32:07
  Elise Swopes: What are you doing with your phone?
• 32:08
  Elise Swopes: Why are you taking pictures?
• 32:10
  David McClelland: Do you remember what your first post on Instagram was?
• 32:13
  Elise Swopes: I think my first post on Instagram was when I was going to, South by Southwest.
• 32:19
  Elise Swopes: And it's not on there anymore because I've, I wish I never like deleted a lot of stuff, but I remember it very clearly.
• 32:25
  Elise Swopes: Cause I, I just, it was just so like, it was the craziest trip.
• 32:29
  Elise Swopes: me and my friends in Chicago, when I was a rapper, we went to South by Southwest and I was in a van with like seven, eight people from Chicago, a couple of rappers, a couple of friends, a couple of photographers, a couple of people.
• 32:42
  Elise Swopes: And we drove all the way from Chicago to Austin, Texas.
• 32:46
  David McClelland: quite a road trip.
• 32:47
  Elise Swopes: Yes, it was.
• 32:49
  Elise Swopes: And I was young.
• 32:51
  Elise Swopes: I didn't really know what was going on.
• 32:53
  Elise Swopes: Honestly, I was, I mean, I was like 20, but, so I took a screenshot of the Google maps from Chicago to Austin.
• 33:01
  Elise Swopes: And then that was my first post
• 33:03
  David McClelland: Wow.
• 33:04
  Elise Swopes: and I was like going on a trip.
• 33:05
  Elise Swopes: And I just, that was the first like pictures I was taking.
• 33:09
  David McClelland: And then at what point did you begin to take it seriously, or maybe people, other people, begin to take your work on there seriously?
• 33:17
  David McClelland: Because I think we take granted the whole Instagram thing.
• 33:20
  David McClelland: It wasn't obvious that Instagram was going to become a thing.
• 33:23
  David McClelland: There was any number of different platforms that were all vying for attention then.
• 33:27
  David McClelland: When did you realise, when did other people realise that this really was a thing for you?
• 33:31
  Elise Swopes: I'd probably say when people started calling me an Insta goddess,
• 33:37
  David McClelland: Oh wow, okay, that'll do it.
• 33:39
  Elise Swopes: Because friends, like big, you know, people who everybody kind of knew would like follow me, you know, people would ask me about Instagram.
• 33:47
  Elise Swopes: They would be like, how did you get all these followers?
• 33:49
  Elise Swopes: But that was a little bit after Instagram actually, decided to make me a suggested user and a suggested user at that time.
• 33:57
  Elise Swopes: It was a pretty big deal.
• 33:59
  David McClelland: yeah,
• 34:00
  Elise Swopes: um, it was just a list of people who, you know, when you, sign up for Instagram, you've got a list of folks who are probably a good example of how you should utilize Instagram.
• 34:11
  Elise Swopes: They're making art, they're posting consistently, they're doing all these different things, um, to kind of get on the popular page at the time, which is a Big deal.
• 34:19
  Elise Swopes: If So we were
• 34:19
  David McClelland: the impact of that in terms of your, followers and your likes and so
• 34:24
  Elise Swopes: Oh, it was huge.
• 34:24
  Elise Swopes: I was making, I, I, I was, gaining thousands of followers a day.
• 34:28
  Elise Swopes: Like just, I mean, it was a shock to the Cisco system because I, I, at first I was like, okay, I don't know what's going on.
• 34:37
  Elise Swopes: And then my fiance, he's also, we, we met, 14 years ago.
• 34:41
  Elise Swopes: And so he's also an Instagrammer and he.
• 34:44
  Elise Swopes: You know, blew up on Instagram afterwards.
• 34:45
  Elise Swopes: But, he was like, Oh, I think you're a suggested user.
• 34:48
  Elise Swopes: And I was like, what is that?
• 34:49
  Elise Swopes: I don't even know what that is.
• 34:50
  Elise Swopes: And so we like looked into it and then, you know, I just started branding myself.
• 34:55
  Elise Swopes: I started making logos.
• 34:56
  Elise Swopes: I've made a website.
• 34:57
  Elise Swopes: Like I was just like, all right, here we go.
• 34:59
  Elise Swopes: And then I, and then I was a part of the first influencer agency.
• 35:03
  Elise Swopes: Then they sold to a big agency and I worked on a lot of big projects and a lot of big brand projects from their first go around for influencers.
• 35:12
  David McClelland: Nike, Apple, I mean we're talking about household, global household names here and like I say this was before influencer became a thing.
• 35:22
  David McClelland: Did you have a role model though?
• 35:23
  David McClelland: Was there someone who you looked up to and said well this is, this is the journey that they're on I would like to go on that were you, was it the Wild West for you and everyone else treading the same path at the time?
• 35:35
  Elise Swopes: I wish that there was someone that I could have just like read a book or I mean, granted, you know, I can read a lot of books now that may not have to do exactly what problem is, but I could find one.
• 35:46
  Elise Swopes: But, you know, at that time it was just, there was no one doing what we were doing, you know, we were just figuring it out along the way and messing up along the way, but also succeeding along the way.
• 35:57
  Elise Swopes: But, you know, it was like, it just feels.
• 36:01
  Elise Swopes: So surreal now to see how influencers have evolved over time.
• 36:06
  Elise Swopes: it's now looked at so negatively when, when we had first really started, it was just, okay, Hey, we're people with a lot of followers and we were just making art and now brands are hitting us up and we need to figure out how to do business.
• 36:20
  Elise Swopes: You know, and that I think was the biggest shock to the system.
• 36:22
  Elise Swopes: It's like, okay, there's contracts.
• 36:24
  Elise Swopes: There's like big talks with people.
• 36:26
  Elise Swopes: There's travel.
• 36:27
  Elise Swopes: Like I didn't even have a credit card and hotels were asking me for my incidentals.
• 36:32
  Elise Swopes: I'm like, what is that?
• 36:32
  Elise Swopes: What do you mean incidentals?
• 36:35
  David McClelland: yeah.
• 36:35
  Elise Swopes: know, like I was learning every step of the way.
• 36:38
  Elise Swopes: So confused, but so ready for like whatever was to come.
• 36:42
  Elise Swopes: And there was just no one really telling anybody what was up.
• 36:47
  David McClelland: Let's fast forward a bit then to maybe three or so years ago.
• 36:52
  David McClelland: NFTs, these non fungible tokens, were very much thrust on stage as a Web3 marketplace mechanism by which digital creatives could build community, build cash, all with the help of some cryptocurrency.
• 37:10
  David McClelland: There was a lot of hype and expectation around them at the time, I remember covering them, but what has followed since then now, back here in 2024, has been seen by many as a bit of an NFT crash, with prices of many high profile NFTs now valued at a fraction of their selling price.
• 37:30
  David McClelland: So, You went big on NFTs at the time, and I've read about a number of projects, you've mentioned one or two of them already, that you've been involved in in that Web3 space, particularly where social issues and creativity meet.
• 37:43
  David McClelland: So, what's your take on NFTs, where they are right now and what their, maybe their longer term journey or what their trajectory is in terms of their value and their utility to creative community, to creatives, and to collectors as well.
• 37:58
  Elise Swopes: Yeah.
• 37:58
  Elise Swopes: okay, so first NFTs, NFTs.
• 38:02
  Elise Swopes: NFTs.
• 38:03
  Elise Swopes: I mean, what is there Not to say
• 38:06
  David McClelland: A lot has said to be fair.
• 38:08
  Elise Swopes: it's just crazy because I've somehow decided yet again to.
• 38:14
  Elise Swopes: Uh, start something that where there is no book, there is no person.
• 38:19
  Elise Swopes: There's nothing out there that's really telling me what's going on.
• 38:21
  Elise Swopes: And, you know, ever since I launched my NFTs on some, super rare, I mean, it's just been a whirlwind of lessons of experience of friendship, of growth, of evolution in so many different ways.
• 38:38
  Elise Swopes: And I'm sure many people can say the same.
• 38:41
  Elise Swopes: If not, even if you have lost a ton of money, you've also gained so many friends.
• 38:47
  Elise Swopes: So many friends, and built things that you might not even have ever thought you can build because you've met people who are on the same wavelength as you.
• 38:56
  Elise Swopes: And to me, that's what web three is about.
• 38:58
  Elise Swopes: At the end of the day, it's our new connection.
• 39:00
  Elise Swopes: It's our new wave of communication and transparency and the way that we communicate in the way that we exchange information.
• 39:08
  Elise Swopes: and that's really what I've learned at the end of the day, but also.
• 39:12
  Elise Swopes: On the other side, you know, where I'm not too involved.
• 39:15
  Elise Swopes: It's like, I mean, granted, I'm, I am, but I kind of stay out of a little bit of it is the crypto side.
• 39:22
  Elise Swopes: I love decentralized finance.
• 39:24
  Elise Swopes: I think there's so many opportunities there, but I just don't have the time to dive into it.
• 39:29
  Elise Swopes: Although I am a part of a lot of initiatives and a lot of boards where we're going to go and help Have speak and make sure that the U.
• 39:37
  Elise Swopes: S.
• 39:37
  Elise Swopes: is aware of different implementations of these processes.
• 39:42
  Elise Swopes: that's kind of why I love what I do, is that I'm not so much your board ape or your other people where I am, creating you know, like a cartoon or a brand or an experience, for a community of that like, it's like, I'm creating a community for people who aren't really seeing themselves in any of those
• 40:10
  David McClelland: I wanted to come on to that point, really, because you mentioned a number of times and I put it into my question as well, because that's been one of my takeaways from following the NFT journey over the last three or four years is that a lot of it seems to revolve around this community that that builds up around the work.
• 40:28
  David McClelland: It's not just a transactional thing.
• 40:31
  David McClelland: Oh look, there's, there's a creator creating something I would like to own that, have a stake in it.
• 40:37
  David McClelland: There's lots of Cs here.
• 40:38
  David McClelland: There's the creators, there's the crypto, there's the contracts as well, smart contracts, all the rest But I think the community stuff sometimes gets left behind, so I'm pleased that that's been very much at the forefront of your journey as well.
• 40:51
  Elise Swopes: I think that if you are involved in web three and day to day community is the, is the only thing that you know, because otherwise there's nothing else that it's worth, because it's a volatile experience with crypto.
• 41:06
  Elise Swopes: I mean, one day it's up one day it's down, but you could be broke and you still have friends and you still have people you're building with and that's fine.
• 41:14
  Elise Swopes: And I think that's kind of the hopium that most people are sipping, to be honest.
• 41:19
  David McClelland: some barriers there, and it feels as though, particularly around crypto, around Web3, there is a technical barrier, but there's also a community barrier as well, in that it seems to be, Tech bros, males, very often tech centric people who are at the forefront of this and it's very easy to be put off.
• 41:40
  David McClelland: As soon as you take a look online at the profiles who typically engage with this stuff, it would be easy for some creatives who don't come from those communities to go, oh no, this isn't for me, there aren't people like me.
• 41:54
  David McClelland: That's those people, and they are quite intimidating.
• 41:58
  David McClelland: You've been trying to do some work to even out that playing field, to make it more welcoming to different communities, to make more democratic for a broader cross section of creators.
• 42:10
  Elise Swopes: Thank you for so eloquently putting that together.
• 42:12
  Elise Swopes: I'll just have you as my hype man for every event.
• 42:15
  Elise Swopes: If you could possibly just come through or we'll just put you through digitally.
• 42:19
  Elise Swopes: But yeah, I mean, I'm just so impressed with how we show up for people who aren't shown up for.
• 42:26
  Elise Swopes: I think also like we produced, uh, one of the first NFT 101 where you can go into Yeah.
• 42:33
  Elise Swopes: Uh, sunrise dot art and you can go and click, learn about NFTs and you'll go and you'll see an NFT dictionary with every single word that you always hear about.
• 42:41
  Elise Swopes: And you're like, what does that even mean?
• 42:42
  Elise Swopes: Like what, you know, breaking down, what is an NFT?
• 42:46
  Elise Swopes: web three, all this different stuff that kind of eludes people.
• 42:49
  Elise Swopes: And then a workshop that I've, put together to educate people about web three and a bunch of other stuff, but I think education is first.
• 42:57
  Elise Swopes: it's something that we really pride ourselves on and then to making sure that we're putting in artists who aren't always celebrated as often as other people, you'll see like the same names.
• 43:08
  Elise Swopes: Like I love people we've like been on projects together.
• 43:12
  Elise Swopes: Don't get me wrong.
• 43:13
  Elise Swopes: Like he's great, but like Beeple has enough accolades, enough stories, enough, you know, media.
• 43:20
  Elise Swopes: And it's, there's so many amazing artists out there who deserve to shine.
• 43:26
  Elise Swopes: and that's.
• 43:27
  Elise Swopes: What we're really trying to do with for them.
• 43:29
  Elise Swopes: Most importantly, every time we do a gallery event with a big brand, whether it's Glamour Orangey from Louis Vuitton or Metamask, right?
• 43:38
  Elise Swopes: Like we did a partner with Metamask, which is the biggest Web3 wallet.
• 43:41
  Elise Swopes: and then also we put together the first NFT marketplace for incarcerated artists.
• 43:46
  Elise Swopes: So we were working and have been working with incarcerated creators who want to sell NFTs and want to learn about NFTs.
• 43:53
  Elise Swopes: So we help educate them.
• 43:55
  Elise Swopes: We provide funding for them.
• 43:57
  Elise Swopes: Um, we're working on a ton of other stuff to just implement different programming in prisons.
• 44:01
  Elise Swopes: So at the end of the day, we love what we do, but we would love to not do it to just make sure there's other ways that people are not imprisoned, but you know, if we can try to help them, gain monetary funding, help them collect a little bit while they're, incarcerated.
• 44:18
  Elise Swopes: And once they get out, they'll be better.
• 44:20
  David McClelland: You mentioned there an NFT 101.
• 44:23
  David McClelland: We'll put some links to that in our show notes.
• 44:27
  David McClelland: For any, creators who are interested, curious about NFTs and whether there might be something available for them, might be something they would like to pursue, what top piece of advice would you give to them?
• 44:41
  Elise Swopes: Well, first I would understand your why, why you want to create NFTs.
• 44:46
  Elise Swopes: Most importantly, what is it going to do for you?
• 44:50
  Elise Swopes: Um, whether you don't succeed or do succeed.
• 44:53
  Elise Swopes: I think the most important thing for me and for a lot of creators is understanding not to put your eggs all in one basket.
• 45:00
  Elise Swopes: Um, you know, create the art that is most important to you, express yourself, continue to elevate your skills, but don't, you know, make it your all.
• 45:07
  Elise Swopes: It's, I mean, NFTs and crypto are just like any other betting, any other kind of game, you know, kind of thing that you can do, you can get addicted and you can, it can change the way you behave if you get too much or too little.
• 45:22
  Elise Swopes: And really just have to make sure you, you understand what you want your outcome to be.
• 45:26
  David McClelland: There may be something, there may be nothing in this, but it strikes me, just drawing a line from the beginning of your journey with Instagram to the beginning of your journey with NFTs, there's a parallel there.
• 45:38
  David McClelland: You aren't afraid to try something new, to set, foot in uncharted sand, even though it might be a little bit shaky.
• 45:46
  David McClelland: You are brave in that regard, I guess.
• 45:50
  Elise Swopes: Thank you.
• 45:51
  Elise Swopes: That means a lot.
• 45:51
  Elise Swopes: I am, I feel brave a lot.
• 45:54
  Elise Swopes: I, I mean, it's, can be a lonely road to an extent, but I'm glad I have people around me who have been on that same journey, but it's also hard.
• 46:02
  Elise Swopes: Um, it's tough, you know, but also tough being the person who wants to always be morally sound in so many ways too.
• 46:11
  Elise Swopes: I just love helping people and I love doing the right thing.
• 46:15
  Elise Swopes: And I think at the end of the day, if that makes me sleep better at night, then that's totally fine.
• 46:20
  David McClelland: Speaking of helping people, you're going to be speaking at The Photography and Video Show later this month.
• 46:27
  David McClelland: What will you be sharing with us there?
• 46:29
  David McClelland: Tease us!
• 46:31
  Elise Swopes: I'm so excited.
• 46:32
  Elise Swopes: I'm going to be talking about, well, my career, but more in depth with more facts, more figures, uh, I'm going to be bringing a lot of information about how to beat this thing called the algorithm that everyone's so obsessed about.
• 46:45
  Elise Swopes: I know that we want to talk about algorithms and I'm just going to give a little touch on it, but I'm kind of anti algorithm.
• 46:51
  Elise Swopes: I believe that we should be, living our, truest selves based on the risks that we take, based on the, dreams that we have, based on the, experiences that we want to have.
• 47:03
  Elise Swopes: And so, I'm willing to question the algorithm, but also put out some facts about the algorithm.
• 47:08
  David McClelland: Okay, well I'm looking forward to hearing that.
• 47:12
  David McClelland: For now, Elise Swopes, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast and look forward to seeing you in Birmingham.
• 47:17
  Elise Swopes: Thank you.
• 47:18
  Elise Swopes: Can't wait.
• 47:22
  David McClelland: Links to Elise swoops work and the really useful NFT one.
• 47:26
  David McClelland: Once you mentioned that are in the show notes for this episode, somewhere in your podcast, player of choice and her talk at the photography and video show at the any seat will be on the Sunday, the 17th of March day two.
• 47:38
  David McClelland: On the creator stage at 1:00 PM and she'll be back again.
• 47:42
  David McClelland: At 4:00 PM for a creator meet and greet.
• 47:49
  David McClelland: Speaking of the in-person show.
• 47:51
  David McClelland: I promised some new news earlier.
• 47:53
  David McClelland: Well, we sort of let the cat out the bag in the interview just then, but Adobe will be back at the photography and video show with the Adobe hub and a theater showcasing all of their exciting new stuff, including I'm sure.
• 48:07
  David McClelland: The generative AI stuff that we've been talking about here on the podcast, head over to the website, too, for details of the NIC on school ambassador lineup, the Fujifilm school lineup.
• 48:17
  David McClelland: Uh, Canon and Sony too.
• 48:19
  David McClelland: We've got book signings now with Rocky nook and the masterclasses that Hazel from the show mentioned last month are selling out quickly.
• 48:27
  David McClelland: You know where to go photography, show.com.
• 48:30
  David McClelland: And I mentioned a discount code who doesn't love a discount code.
• 48:33
  David McClelland: Now the tickets for the show are already remarkably good value.
• 48:38
  David McClelland: Don't tell Hazel and the organizers.
• 48:39
  David McClelland: I said that, but because you are a loyal listener to this podcast, you can get a further 20% off your standard entry tickets by using the discount code pod TPS 24 at checkout.
• 48:53
  David McClelland: So go to photography.
• 48:54
  David McClelland: show.com.
• 48:55
  David McClelland: Click on get tickets right there at the top.
• 48:58
  David McClelland: And remember that discount code pod TPS 24.
• 49:04
  David McClelland: Gabrielle, fascinating conversation there with Elise.
• 49:07
  David McClelland: And as we were talking about before, one of the frontiers of creativity as a photographer or a filmmaker or creator in the much more broader sense is how AI Generative AI our influencing our work.
• 49:23
  David McClelland: But another area that we touched on there with Elise is the way that technology is also influencing the distribution of our work and some of the fundamentals about its monetary value to us as, creators.
• 49:37
  David McClelland: What's your take?
• 49:37
  David McClelland: Cause I know that the centralised, decentralisation conversation is something that you've engaged with and indeed have worked with in the past.
• 49:45
  David McClelland: What did you take away from that part of the chat with Elise and what's your experience as a professional creator in this area of technology and distribution of our creative works?
• 49:57
  Gabrielle Motola: I mean, one of the things that you need as a creator, to make things is, is money.
• 50:02
  Gabrielle Motola: That is the way the world works
• 50:04
  David McClelland: been the case, hasn't it?
• 50:05
  Gabrielle Motola: You know, we're not on universal basic income yet.
• 50:08
  Gabrielle Motola: Um, you know, so you have to figure out a way as a creative how you're going to survive.
• 50:12
  Gabrielle Motola: And there's many ways to do that.
• 50:14
  Gabrielle Motola: You don't necessarily have to earn a living at the thing that you do creating.
• 50:17
  Gabrielle Motola: And some people balance that really well.
• 50:19
  Gabrielle Motola: You know, they make a living doing something else and then they create.
• 50:22
  Gabrielle Motola: Others, you know, live full time off of their work, what they create pays their bills and they balance that very well.
• 50:29
  Gabrielle Motola: so I suppose you, you need to think about how, how am I going to earn a living from this.
• 50:34
  Gabrielle Motola: And certainly when I saw NFTs blow up and smart contracts and been watching blockchains technology for a while, you know, it's very interesting.
• 50:42
  Gabrielle Motola: The idea of decentralization where no one server, no one machine, no one person, no one organization can control everything.
• 50:50
  Gabrielle Motola: And certainly, you know, that's the, the world of blockchain and crypto, and that's interesting.
• 50:55
  Gabrielle Motola: And, and NFTs, the thing that caught my attention most was the idea of a smart contract and being able to assign value to something that's purchased.
• 51:03
  Gabrielle Motola: The transaction is instantaneous.
• 51:05
  Gabrielle Motola: There's no management of it.
• 51:07
  Gabrielle Motola: There's no chasing of invoices.
• 51:08
  David McClelland: a smart contract, just for those who aren't necessarily so plumbed into it, a smart contract is where, built into the transactional technology, you can put some rules in there that say, right, so any money that changes hands, 10 percent goes to this person, 5 percent goes to this person, and these other things, whatever they may be, will happen.
• 51:31
  Gabrielle Motola: it's a funnel where you get to assign royalties, let's say.
• 51:35
  Gabrielle Motola: So, like, for the sale of work, that's really interesting.
• 51:38
  Gabrielle Motola: because not only if you buy a photograph of mine does the transaction happen instantaneously, but if I'm crediting, um, somebody in the photograph, a model, uh, hair and makeup, anybody who helped make the picture, I can assign that ahead of time.
• 51:50
  Gabrielle Motola: And that, when that payment comes in, it just gets sent out to their accounts.
• 51:54
  Gabrielle Motola: And,
• 51:55
  David McClelland: No chasing down lost royalties, which, goodness knows, in a lot of creative spaces has caused a lot of headaches, a lot of consternation, and a lot of litigation over the years as well.
• 52:04
  Gabrielle Motola: Yeah.
• 52:04
  Gabrielle Motola: It's a lot of time, a lot of frustration, yeah, so there's the smart contract, but then there's the blockchain, which is immutable.
• 52:10
  Gabrielle Motola: It's a ledger that can't be changed.
• 52:13
  Gabrielle Motola: So it's not like a spreadsheet where you can just go in and edit it.
• 52:16
  Gabrielle Motola: Once it's in, it's in.
• 52:18
  Gabrielle Motola: And that's interesting from a perspective of scarcity or editions or rarity that increases your.
• 52:24
  Gabrielle Motola: You know, could, could potentially, depending on your market, if you have a market, increase your work's value.
• 52:30
  Gabrielle Motola: But what we're talking about with smart contracts is, and this kind of, especially with the NFT being able to build in a secondary royalty for the artist.
• 52:39
  Gabrielle Motola: So you buy my work, you sell it to David.
• 52:42
  Gabrielle Motola: I get a percentage that I can set, I would get a percentage of that transaction, but it's essentially secondary market income.
• 52:49
  Gabrielle Motola: But the thing that's really interesting about that is it's more, you know, it's scalable income, which means it's money while you sleep, you're not wage working.
• 52:58
  Gabrielle Motola: So your, your work is working for you once it's out into the world.
• 53:02
  David McClelland: And of course you speak about scarcity there and that potentially having some value in the, Non digital world, as well as in the digital world, uh, editions, uh, is certainly an area where we try to create a, a scarcity.
• 53:16
  David McClelland: What's your take on those?
• 53:17
  Gabrielle Motola: In the print world?
• 53:18
  Gabrielle Motola: Yeah.
• 53:19
  Gabrielle Motola: So in the world of photography or indeed art, um, if a photographer puts an image out into the world, let's say on a print on demand system, which I've seen, you know, we're seeing the rise of those, uh, sales funnels.
• 53:32
  Gabrielle Motola: and let's say you print it on, uh, Hanamula paper, PermaJet, or whatever you print it on, and it goes out, you never see, you never have any interaction with the person who buys it, and it goes out into the world, just like that.
• 53:42
  Gabrielle Motola: What's the difference between that, and me getting, um, you know, or anybody who would do this, and I wouldn't, but getting an image of yours off the internet, up rezzing it, printing it on the very same paper, there's no difference, really.
• 53:56
  Gabrielle Motola: You're creating posters of your work, and that's fine.
• 53:59
  Gabrielle Motola: You can do that.
• 54:00
  Gabrielle Motola: There's nothing to stop you.
• 54:02
  Gabrielle Motola: I've been looking into editions because we've been having this conversation for so long with so many photographers, print sales.
• 54:08
  Gabrielle Motola: And the truth is, I don't know very many people who are selling a lot of prints to the point where that could be a main income stream, and I don't know that it should necessarily be, but it is interesting if you're going to put your work out into the world that you do it with as much care as you made it.
• 54:23
  Gabrielle Motola: And so the world of editions, which is, again, I did a deep dive on this and rooted in France, of course.
• 54:30
  Gabrielle Motola: Um, and art and commerce and how art is taxed or not.
• 54:34
  Gabrielle Motola: Um, traditionally a limited edition would be 30 and no more.
• 54:38
  Gabrielle Motola: And if you were going to do it in a purist sense, you print it all at once and never again.
• 54:44
  Gabrielle Motola: And there's many ways to do this.
• 54:45
  Gabrielle Motola: And I'm not saying that there's a right and a wrong way.
• 54:48
  Gabrielle Motola: There's a purist way.
• 54:49
  Gabrielle Motola: And then there is any other way you want to
• 54:51
  David McClelland: So printing them all at once so that you've got consistency of, ink and of paper, medium, whatever it is you're, you're printing on.
• 55:00
  Gabrielle Motola: Yep.
• 55:00
  Gabrielle Motola: And this was obviously a little bit more of an impact, made more of a difference when we were talking about, let's say, uh, lithographic prints.
• 55:08
  Gabrielle Motola: where you have to literally prep ink in a press and the humidity and temperature of the day would affect the paper and, you know, you'd have all these variables.
• 55:16
  Gabrielle Motola: Or you were in the darkroom and each print was, you know, the chemistry was mixed a certain way and, you know, the paper was a certain temperature, the chemistry is a certain temperature.
• 55:25
  Gabrielle Motola: You'd print them all at once.
• 55:27
  Gabrielle Motola: And then you'd sign a number of them and there would be a way of validating that this work was indeed your work by your hands.
• 55:34
  Gabrielle Motola: And it would be put out into the world because, you know, before Instagram, how would other people see your work except in print?
• 55:41
  Gabrielle Motola: There was a way of communicating with the world and then there would be a certain number of those images floating around that would be for sale and you would sell that edition and once it was sold out it was gone.
• 55:50
  Gabrielle Motola: And then the secondary market takes over and you've got 30 images out there and 30 people own them or one person owns all 30 and other people want to buy them and then a secondary market's created.
• 56:03
  Gabrielle Motola: You would have a Certificate of Authenticity.
• 56:05
  Gabrielle Motola: This is where NFTs come in.
• 56:06
  Gabrielle Motola: It'd be very interesting to have that as your Certificate of Authenticity, which people have been doing.
• 56:11
  Gabrielle Motola: Back to this idea of additions and scarcity.
• 56:13
  Gabrielle Motola: I mean, if there's no market for your work, it doesn't matter if you print one or 30 or 300 images.
• 56:18
  Gabrielle Motola: If nobody buys them, nobody buys them.
• 56:20
  Gabrielle Motola: But, I do think It's important for me to have my hand in my work.
• 56:24
  Gabrielle Motola: So, validating the fact that the print that was made was by me.
• 56:29
  Gabrielle Motola: It was my approved print.
• 56:31
  Gabrielle Motola: I did see it and I approved the print and it is what I want to put into the world.
• 56:36
  Gabrielle Motola: I happen to be, you know, as I said, a colorist, so I'm very well versed in the process of grading my work, but I'm also, my background was in printing.
• 56:44
  Gabrielle Motola: Um, I was a C type printer.
• 56:47
  Gabrielle Motola: And so as you know, recently just got back into digital printing and that's one of the talks I'll be doing at The Photography Show is taking people on that process of, actually exploring different paper types for images.
• 57:00
  Gabrielle Motola: And we talked about recipes and having taste and serving your image.
• 57:03
  Gabrielle Motola: It's the same thing with paper choice when you're printing, you know, different papers will affect the emotional impact of, and the visual resonance of the image differently.
• 57:12
  Gabrielle Motola: figuring out a good way to create a print, sign it, and then make a certificate of authenticity, sign it.
• 57:18
  David McClelland: You will be speaking about the art of printing, bringing portraits to life in print at the Photography and Video Show on the Sunday, the 17th of March.
• 57:28
  David McClelland: you'll also be talking about the therapeutic power of street photography on the Sunday too, on the Behind the Lens stage if you're listening in and you want to have a chat with Gabrielle about either of these then come along to those sessions and maybe pop some questions to her afterwards.
• 57:48
  David McClelland: Um, That is all we have time for on the podcast this month and did deep for this season.
• 57:53
  David McClelland: Well, sort of the in-person photography and video show takes place between Saturday the 16th and Tuesday, the 19th of March, 2024 at the NEC in Birmingham, England.
• 58:03
  David McClelland: And the plan is that we will release a bonus episode of the podcast from the show.
• 58:09
  David McClelland: So if you listened to the podcast and you're at the show in Birmingham, then we want to hear from you.
• 58:15
  David McClelland: So come and find me, I'll be there all four days.
• 58:18
  David McClelland: Hit me up on the socials.
• 58:19
  David McClelland: If you like, we would love to grab a word from you and we'll try and include as much flavor from the show in Birmingham.
• 58:26
  David McClelland: As we can in that bonus episode.
• 58:30
  David McClelland: Meanwhile, if you've enjoyed this season of the show, then please, please, please do all of the things that podcasts normally ask you to do hit subscribe, tell your friends, share with your local camera club.
• 58:41
  David McClelland: Actually, I'm not sure many podcasts asked you to do that.
• 58:43
  David McClelland: And Hey, we would just love it.
• 58:45
  David McClelland: If you took two tiny minutes of your time to leave us a review.
• 58:49
  David McClelland: Don't forget that promo code pod TPS 24 and save 20% on your tickets.
• 58:58
  David McClelland: We're on the socials searches up on Facebook.
• 59:00
  David McClelland: We are at the photography show on Instagram and we're even on Tik TOK now, too at UK photo show.
• 59:09
  David McClelland: I'd like to thank all of our guests from this series from Hugo banana and Boris L Dickson at the beginning of the run to Kelly Brown and Ben Moore and well countless others in between who've shared their experiences, their expertise, and even their opinions with us.
• 59:25
  David McClelland: If you've only just discovered us towards the end of the series, then I urge you to go back to episode one because we've had some caulking conversations over the last year or so.
• 59:36
  David McClelland: Speaking of which Gabrielle thank you for joining us this month.
• 59:40
  David McClelland: How can listeners best tune into your work online?
• 59:43
  Gabrielle Motola: Thank you for having me.
• 59:45
  Gabrielle Motola: I think the best place to start is my website.
• 59:47
  Gabrielle Motola: GabrielleMotola.
• 59:48
  Gabrielle Motola: com, just my full name.
• 59:50
  Gabrielle Motola: I have a Patreon, which is a deep dive on a lot of things.
• 59:53
  Gabrielle Motola: There's a lot of content, a lot of behind the scenes process, color grading.
• 59:57
  Gabrielle Motola: And that is Patreon.
• 59:59
  Gabrielle Motola: com forward slash GMotoPhotos which is also my Instagram handle.
• 1:00:03
  David McClelland: Gabrielle, thank you very much indeed.
• 1:00:07
  David McClelland: That's all for now.
• 1:00:09
  David McClelland: See you in Birmingham.