BY WIL CREWS
SPORTSCREWS@OPELIKAOBSERVER.COM
OPELIKA —
An Opelika resident is changing the way we look at pictures.
GrouPixx, a new photo app developed by Alzata Florence, a pastor at Opelika’s Fellowship of Faith Christian Center, makes family or friend portraits without everyone being in the same location.
“The purpose of it is to bring people together,” Florence said of the app. “It’s different … unique.”
How does it work? Well, after downloading GrouPixx, signing up and syncing your contacts with the app, the first step is for the user to take a photo. Then, the user can invite their contacts to take a picture from wherever they are in the world. Next, the user simply picks out the silhouettes (how each person will be positioned in the photo) and sifts through the various backgrounds available in the app. Places like the beach, and holiday-themed backgrounds for Christmas, the Fourth of July, New Years and more are available for users to choose. The user can even use a stylist function to write special messages in the background of the photo.
Furthermore, the hope for future versions of GrouPixx is to allow for users to employ live gelocations as backgrounds in real time, and to submit their own backgrounds to the app for general use by all users. Once all that is finished, GrouPixx syncs to social media so that users can share their creations.
The insipiration behind GrouPixx dates back to 2018, Florence said. It was during that time that Florence realized her desire for a new family portrait, like the ones people used to get at Sears or JCPenney.
“I had a desire for my family to take a portrait,” Florence said. “It had been 18 years since we had a family portrait. But it was just hard to bring everyone together because of our geographical locations and schedules.”
At the time, Florence said she gave up on the idea of getting her family all together for a photo, and went about her life as God told her to lead it.
It wasn’t until later in 2019 that a churchgoer approached Florence in the parking lot of a grocery store with what some may call a moment of epiphany. The churchgoer told Florence she had experienced a dream in which Florence created something that was going to change the world.
“Well, I’m not going to create a cure for cancer … so I said whatever it is God wants me to do, I’m going to do it,” Florence said.
Also in the dream was a man. A man that the church-goer said would help Florence on her journey to changing the world.
Enter Joe Norris. Norris is a computer geographic information system specialist and consultant in Opelika. He is also now the lead technological developer of GrouPixx.
“I thought that would be a good challenge,” Norris said of the moment Florence presented him with the idea for GrouPixx. “The app itself had a uniqueness and novelty to it. It piqued my interest to get involved in the project.”
Then, in July of 2020, in the midst of the pandemic which changed traditional schools of thought in many industries, Florence’s inspiration turned into full-on motivation following a personal moment with her God — and the popular TV show “Shark Tank”. Florence got hooked on “Shark Tank” — a show where start-up companies present their ideas to a board of “sharks” — big-wig investors from various industries. “Shark Tank”, according to Florence, truly got the wheels spinning on the idea of GrouPixx. Ultimately, however, Florence was convinced through prayer to pursue the idea of her new app.
“When I got up, I was just in awe of what He had revealed to me,” Florence said. “He connected the dots. It started with the desire, then He confirmed it with the dream, then He brought it to me in prayer. That’s how it [GrouPixx] got started.”
Earlier this month, Florence and her team held a press event announcing GrouPixx to the public. However, the app won’t go public until sometime in late January, she said. Once public, GrouPixx will be free to download, but will cost a minimal fee to access its features.
Florence said she hopes the app can further bring families and friends closer together — even if they are apart — in the new world of ever-constant, ever-changing connectedness.