We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Francesca Blue. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Francesca below.
Alright, Francesca thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?
I started photographing when I was 12. A neighbor overheard my mom talking about my interest in photography and left an old Minolta film camera on the living room table for me to try. I picked up the camera and, many years later, still have it in my kit and shoot with it often. Those first few years of learning happened in a kind of weird intersection of photography and internet culture. Myspace was huge, Ashton Kutcher was the mascot for Nikon point and shoot cameras and no one could buy film for their old Polaroids – so they were decor on your shelf or $1 at the garage sale. Film photography happened in darkroom classes and in circles of hobbyists. But for a preteen, learning was pretty lonely. Still, I loved it.
I didn’t start shooting continuously until high school. I took a few classes and that helped with the technical part, but I still didn’t really understand why I was shooting or what I wanted to say with it until I went to college. After a lot of internet searches, tutorial videos, experimentation, and rolls and rolls of ruined film, I started leaning into my style of photography. I was taking photos every day of people I met, coworkers, family, friends of friends. The more people I shot, the more confident I felt in actually telling people what my ideas were. Some photoshoots turned out ok and then others, miraculously it seemed, became art I was really proud of. I started forming deep bonds with the people I shot, and many of them became my friends. They’d be crucial to my growth as an artist, helping me execute half-baked ideas and supporting me when I felt like quitting.
There’s no single best way to learn photography in my opinion. I’m still actively learning myself and probably always will be. But if I had to give any advice at all, it would be to shoot all the time. And to appreciate that not all your work is going to be a masterpiece or even good. That’s ok.
Francesca, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I am a fashion photographer from Austin, TX and the cofounder of Doppelgänger Magazine. My photography is a celebration of emotion weaved into colorful sets and wardrobes. In 2020, I founded Doppelgänger Magazine with one of my friends and fellow artists. We have a tiny team of really talented people and have released three print issues that spotlight emerging artists. In Doppelgänger, we get to explore a lot of really cool concepts like shadows, doubles, alter egos, memories and reflections. It has been a really rewarding project and a huge inspiration for me.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
I just want people to explore their identity in a really fun, safe, and different way. We all naturally try to project a certain image of ourselves when someone takes a picture, but when you add all these other elements – light, props, makeup, hair, clothes, fabric – you get to be someone else for a moment. Embodying another identity makes you feel more comfortable in your own. It’s an opportunity you really only get when you create art.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
I have so many ideas. Some are so logistically difficult that they will probably never become photos. Even so, just being able to execute a few of the things in my head is extremely rewarding. Many photoshoots don’t live up to my initial ideas, plenty become something else entirely over the course of the shoot, but that’s part of the fun of creating art in the first place. You try to somehow put this idea together with all these constraints and either you end up executing it or you end up with something new. Either way, you created something and that in itself is very rewarding. So much of our “creating” is for social media. It’s nice to play around and make art that isn’t just for likes or follows.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/francescablue/
Image Credits
Personal photo by Kalin Mott Additional photos by Francesca Blue