Words From The Girls Behind The Lens: Isabel Franklin

How did you discover a passion for photography at your age?  At 15 the only thing I was passionate about were naps and you're already a really talented photographer!

I think my interest in photography started at a very young age - my mother has photos of me, aged 2, taking a photo of her with a little polaroid - so it’s always been in my life. My dad bought me my first camera when I was 11, and I think that’s where my passion for it really started. I sort of become known as “the girl with the camera” - I rarely went anywhere without it, and I loved that I was connected with something I was so passionate about. I am so interested in people, particularly girls, as they are who I’m surrounded by, and how unique each person is. I love discovering new layers to people and I love the art of capturing a person in a photograph.

You take a lot of wonderful portraits, a lot of them with Nature as a background. What inspires that? 

Where I live is a big part of inspiration for my photographs, it’s so green - wherever I look there’s always trees and flowers, and convenience also factors in… Obviously my parents can’t drive me to cool new places everytime I’m shooting, so I generally use my surroundings as a background for my photographs. Additionally, many of my favourite photographers (Nesrin Danan, Ron Dadon, Jessica Kobeissi) use nature in their photographs, so it all fits in nicely with the environment I live in. 

What do you look for when you're searching for people to photograph? A specific look, hair colour etc? 

I’ve noticed a really interesting thing since I’ve started really getting into photography - the texture of skin. Each person has a unique skin texture that reflects light differently, so I tend to now look at skin to see if it reflects light really well, as I think this turns out best in photographs. I don’t really look for a specific feature like brown hair, or a certain colour eyes, I like to look for unique looking girls with a couple defining features that makes them really stand out, whether that may be their hair, eyes, mouth, ect. Saying all this, I generally only photograph my friends so I haven’t really had experience of going out and selecting a model from an agency or searching for a model at, for example, a shopping centre.

This is a hard hitting one, but where do you hope to see yourself and your work in 5 years?  

In 5 years I will be 20 - which is super scary! I am hoping to venture more into film, specifically into production, so maybe having finished an apprenticeship at one of the UK’s major broadcasting corporations and living in LA - but I will only be moving to America if there is a change in US president as I don’t think I would move there with the current political climate. I would like to be working as a production runner and using my photography to make money on the side, however, if photography takes me in a different direction that lets me survive purely on my photography I definitely won’t be complaining.

Check out Isabel's work and follow her on Instagram!