We were lucky to catch up with Crista Rock recently and have shared our conversation below.
Crista , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Have you been able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen? Was it like that from day one? If not, what were some of the major steps and milestones and do you think you could have sped up the process somehow knowing what you know now?
I knew I was going to be a photographer from the time I was itty bitty. There was one moment that I can recall very vividly. I was probably six or seven years old. My parents were watching tv when I suddenly woke up from a very intricate dream. I immediately ran downstairs yelling mom!!!! dad!!! …. I’m going to be a photographer!! They just kinda laughed and said ummmmm ok… The rest is kinda history. From that moment forward, I dedicated all of my time and eventually my entire life to film.
The early days were filled with working for free and as I got older I got real paying jobs working in film, tv and commercials.
When I was 21 I had another one of those incredibly vivid dreams. This time it was about New Orleans. It was in the year 2000 and I had a pretty nice job as a stage manager at a film studio called EDR in Cleveland. I woke up in the middle of the night and declared loudly to the heavens that I was moving to New Orleans… And I did 30 days later.
I became a photojournalist for New Orleans news station wdsu and was one of the only female journalists to stay for Katrina. That storm changed my life more than I’ll ever know. It shaped everything I do and still do to this day.
I started my own production company in 2011. I really wanted to do documentaries and dive deeper into being a director. Nowadays I spend lots of time trying to push myself to try different ways of telling the story. I still am just absolutely head over heels about photography and film.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I think when it comes to any artist we always find ourselves trying to answer the question … soooooo then what do you do exactly? I tend to just say a bunch of words that sound like something. So I will attempt again to try and describe what I do.
Here it goes…
I try to take pretty pictures and tell interesting stories.
I enjoy working with people who want to make the world a better more colorful place.
Can you share one of your favorite marketing or sales stories?
This is a pretty recent story actually. I was hired to produce/ direct a commercial help recruit police officers for nopd. I wrote a script that included a wide range of New Orleans culture bearers including a few dancers from the well known bounce artist a Big Freedia.
The commercial was absolutely amazing. It turned out beautifully. However we received some very harsh criticism and feedback that was negative towards the lgbtq community. I was blindsided. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. NOPD pulled the commercial almost immediately after it was released. They gave into the hate rather than fight against the bigotry. Folk’s left hatful messages for me at every turn. I felt so defeated but knew that I couldn’t let that hate win.
The world is in so much pain. We need fighters. We need lovers. We need art. I can do those things and I think I’ll continue doing those things until I die…. With a camera in my hand to boot. :)
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
I like to share my art wherever people look at art (and some places where art isn’t but needs to be) so that definitely includes social media.. I think folks resonate with people that are real and not these overly filtered personalities.
To boast though…. I do have the most watched Mardi Gras video of all time. Just saying…
Oh and I stated the mayor of New Orleans tiktok page during the pandemic. We had a few viral videos on the tiktok.
Contact Info:
- Website: Cristaphoto.com
- Instagram: Cristarockphoto
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@crista0rock
Image Credits
Crista Rock