It’s Thursday: you’re walking through the Arbor in a rush, dodging petitioners and clubs tabling, basically just trying to make it to your next lecture in time to save your unassigned-assigned seat. In the blur of it all, you miss the sound of the shuttering of a camera, and the man behind it.
Callahan Morgan, or @ivstreets as he is better known to the community of UCSB, is an esteemed photographer whose focus is to capture the unique culture known to our small college town of Isla Vista. With a recent boost in Instagram following, Morgan has grown to become even more recognized in the average IV student’s eye. What’s his perspective on this?
When I met him at Coral Tree Cafe for our interview, Morgan walked in with a storm of rain gear and ski pants, anticipating rain during his weekly shoot in the Arbor. Because it was much too hot inside for his snow outfit, we moved outside and sat at a table in the sun to conduct our interview.
Growing up as a local in Santa Barbara, Morgan was always around Isla Vista. When I asked what drew him to photographing IV, he said it was the incredibly unique community that is fostered here.
“In its own right, UCSB is sort of a culmination of so many different cool things to photograph,” he began. “There’s so many people coming from a lot of different regions, with different interests converging at one point. I don’t know anywhere else nearby where I can go to two sports games in one day, a performance for a cultural club, and then at the end of the day go to four parties. There’s so many different ways to capture UCSB, and I think it speaks a lot to not only college culture, but the unique vibrancy of Isla Vista and UCSB. It was captivating to me and I wanted to capture that.”
But why photography as opposed to other art forms? There are many ways to portray how special Isla Vista is to the outside world.
Morgan crossed his leg. “Funny that you mentioned another art form, because I came from music. Well, actually, I started with engineering, which is less artistic but still has some form of art to it, and then I switched to music, and then photography.”
Morgan isn’t alone when it comes to switching life paths. It seems like most people change their minds before settling on what their dream is. According to the United States Department of Education, about 1 out of every 10 students will change their major at least once.
But he explained with a smile why he settled on photography. “The thing with photography is that it’s so much more appreciated when it’s shared. To me, it felt like there was something very personal and more moving about capturing a moment in a photo, versus writing a music piece or designing something. It’s a really great vehicle for emotional expression. It says a lot about how you see the world… I mean, I could keep going on for a while.” He later added, “I couldn’t give it a blanket term, other than saying it still has this photojournalistic, investigative lens on it. I tend to like photographing candid moments the best, with people in their natural environment.”
A year ago, Morgan would describe his style as “photojournalistic,” as he did a lot less editing of his photos. He didn’t care about the artistic aspect as much as the content. He explained that now, his style is a little different. From street-style fashion photography, to parties, to more architectural photos, he sort of does it all.
I nodded in agreement with him. The @ivstreets Instagram feed is filled with pictures of students on skateboards, smiling, and embracing their friends.
“You also do a lot of fun photo challenges on your Instagram, like shooting upside down and such. What made you start doing this?” I asked.
Since he’s been on campus so many days, doing basically the same thing, Morgan explained it’s a matter of how he makes it more interesting for himself by seeing how his “creativity responds to these challenges.”
Morgan recently had an extreme growth in following, with the ivstreets account at over 300k followers just this fall quarter. In an interview with The Daily Nexus last May, his account had almost 6500 followers.
I asked, “Callahan, you’ve been steadily growing a following, even being compared to the likes of Hot Ticket (may their account rest in peace). How do you feel about this success? What do you think got you there?”
Morgan laughed a bit. “I’ve gone through different phases with how I thought about it, because like you said it was very sudden. I don’t know… like to me, it’s like I’m just some guy with a camera. It’s really nice to feel appreciated, and like there’s this larger audience, but at the same time… I don’t want it to distract me from what the purpose of the project was to begin with.”
He went on to say that his approach shifted, and he thinks that’s part of what got him to his present day success. Morgan realized there’s a cap on how many people he can reach in IV that use Instagram, and maybe he could focus more on showcasing the general college lifestyle.
“When that switch flipped in my brain, it changed the way I approached my content. I went from doing primarily photo posts, and just being an anonymous observer, to putting my own personality behind it… and being a character, I guess you could say.”
But how did he get there? Morgan said the Instagram algorithm really liked his shortfilm content, like Reels. Over the course of a week and a half, he had several reels get a couple million views each. He believes that this, along with a combination of his consistent posts that depict the college lifestyle, are why he grew so rapidly.
“I was honestly just as surprised as other people,” Morgan remarked.
Anyone with a large following is likely going to have critics, and people who doubt the authenticity of success. Many people even claimed that Morgan bought followers.
When I asked how he would respond to these critics, Morgan shifted in his seat and smiled a bit. “I just think it’s funny honestly. My response so far has just been clowning on them, for lack of a better word… Like, I don’t really need to defend myself. I wake up every morning knowing I’m doing something that’s legit.”
In fact, his drive actually comes from the haters.
When he wakes up and feels unmotivated, Morgan says he looks “at the good comments, but I also look at the people who are doubting me… and it gives me a little boost. So I guess I’d say… thanks? Like you can have your opinions, I think it’s funny, and like as long as it’s light hearted, then yeah whatever… I don’t care if someone thinks my account is fake, that doesn’t really bother me. It did at first, I was like, ‘oh f*ck, this is annoying,’ but now I just embrace it.”
I asked Morgan to leave our Her Campus readers with any advice or lingering thoughts, and he really wanted to extend his thanks to Isla Vista as a whole.
“Recently I’ve been overcome with a lot of gratitude for the acceptance that I’ve had in this community. Like you said, with any person that gets popular there’s gonna be rejection and acceptance. But I feel very blessed to be in a place as open and receptive to what I’m doing as Isla Vista is. I know at times it can feel intrusive, and it can seem like an invasion of privacy, or these kinds of things. I feel grateful that I’ve had time to develop my intention, and for people to see that I’m not doing this for a negative reason.”
At that moment, several people walked by and turned to look at Morgan. (He’s become a sort of campus celebrity, in his own way, with people either looking to avoid the camera or pose for one of his themed days).
“I guess I would say thank you. I feel like Isla Vista is a great place, and I’m so overwhelmingly grateful to have people that are not only down to be in cool photos, but also who come up and talk to me.”
Isla Vista is such a unique community, with a huge amount of diversity and interesting people to connect with.
Morgan says, “I’m just some guy with a camera taking pictures of a cool place; So thanks for letting me take your pictures. I hope that I can share it and make people think you’re cool too.” Who knows, maybe you’ll end up on the next “Theme Thursday” post!