Interview with Emmanuella

Recently, I've been on Facebook a lot, stalking my friend Emmanuella who I met at the Rookie meet-up last summer, drooling at her AMAZING photographic skills! I finally decided to just blog about her because she is so freaking talented and deserves way more recognition. I interviewed her and fell in love with her even more omg she is such a rad babe!! 

Her Flickr is amazing and basically everything she points her camera at turns into a masterpiece. SHE IS SO TALENTED. AUGH. 

1. How do you find inspiration/where did you get your ideas for your shoots?

I find a lot of my inspiration from fashion magazines and movies. My ideas are fully mine but my photo shoots are my inspired take of song lyrics, movies, and sometimes my dreams. 

2. How long have you been taking photos? What got you interested in photography? 

I've been taking photos for 3 years now. Bands actually got my interested in photography. I would always go on Facebook and see bands post photos awesome photo shoots by photographers and I was like "hey! I could do that, that would be awesome!"

3. What photographers inspire you? 

 Natalie Kucken, Francesca Woodman, Dakota Gordon, Sandy Kim, Diane Arbus, Faith Silva, Petra Collins, Shelbie Dimond.

4. How did you learn to develop photos? How much do you think developing them adds to the photos?

 I leaned to develop my photos at my schools darkroom. I think developing them myself adds a lot to my photos and me as an artist. There is more emotion and feeling put into my photographs that way.

5. What do you like/dislike about developing your own black and white photos?

The only things I don't like about developing my own photos is that you have a possibility of the chemicals messing it up, like a lot of the time when I use metal reels, the film gets stuck together and chemical marks appear.

6. Do you do any other forms of art?

Other forms of art I create include film making. I love making films and I've been doing that for longer than my photography. I'm taking this awesome course right now in San Francisco which teaches us how to use a 16mm Bolex and create our own experimental films. I also have make official music videos for the independent SF label Dark Entries. 

7. What's your favourite things about photography as opposed to any other art form?

 My favorite things about photography is the still, unique, moment in time that you are able to capture and being able to tell a story through those still snapshots.

8. What would your dream job be/if you could live anywhere where would it be?

My dream job would be a fashion photographer and band photographer in New York. On the side, I'd work at a record label and continue making music videos.

9. What's your favourite movie? Song? Do these things influence your photos?

My favorite movie is the French movie Lost In New York. I don't have a favorite song but I do have a large obsession with minimal synth music. Bands such as Lust for Youth or Xeno & Oaklander. It greatly influences my work.

10. Do you have any last parting thoughts? Maybe advice for aspiring photographers?

My advice to other aspiring photographers such as myself is practice makes perfect! I go through stages where I feel like I'm going nowhere and my photos suck then I remind myself to keep trying and don't let others make me feel bad about myself or my photography.

Definitely check out her Flickr, she is so so sooo rad. 
<3 <3 <3
Maya