Today we’d like to introduce you to Fiona Buckley.
Fiona, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I’ve always been a highly creative person and have expressed myself in many ways, including playing music, drawing and painting. I got the desire to get into photography when I was about 11 years old on vacation with my older cousin in Maine. He was taking a macro photo with his DSLR of a spider in its web right by the lake. The way that he portrayed something that’s around us every day in a completely different light by highlighting the beauty of the details like the water droplets, shimmers and pattern on the spider opened up a whole new world for me. I “bugged” him to let me take pictures with his camera for the rest of the trip. As I got a little older, I started experimenting with film photography, Photoshop and then found a whole new passion with video. I started really having fun manipulating my photos and video to tell a more personalized story. I went to school for Media Arts at the University of Montana, where I was introduced to Adobe After Effects and Premiere.
After Effects felt pretty daunting when I first started but creating something on this softwares was such an awesome juxtaposition to the things in life I couldn’t control and I found so much joy in creating images and videos that otherwise would stay up in my head. My first “real” job was traveling around the country and making video content for IRONMAN and Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon Series races. If you ever did one of those races, I was one of the few goofy people in a yellow vest and a big dorky helmet hopping on and off the back of a motorcycle with a camera in each hand. It was an amazing opportunity that introduced me to a lot of rad people, including one of my biggest inspirations, Casey Neistat at the Rock ‘n’ Roll Philadelphia start line. It also taught me more about my craft and helped clarify that I really didn’t like being micromanaged at a corporate company. So I quit my job about a year ago to start my own business: Fiona Buckley Media. I’m working on getting more specific with my line of work but recently, I’ve been working with a lot of inspiring badass women, editing interviews with female film directors, and have been making some graphics in my free time to encourage people to VOTE.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
There can be a lot of fear involved in doing something that no one else in your family or community has done. I always wanted to be an artist when I grew up. When I was in high school, I remember one of my family friends asking me, “What you want to do for work?” and I told them I wanted to make videos. The look on their face made it pretty clear that they couldn’t really conceptualize what I had just said. It was before video on social media had really boomed into the unique way it did and before people could make careers with a phone camera, a ring light and Google AdSense.
One of the challenging things about making your passion into a living, though, is that there’s no guidebook. If you want to be a lawyer, you go to school. If you want to be a doctor, you go to school. I went to school for four years but I stopped going because they kept changing the requirements to my program. My field is constantly changing and there’s always some new video trend that you can learn on YouTube or just figure out yourself. School is great for a lot of reasons, but they can’t teach you authenticity. I heard an inspiring quote from one of the interviews I was editing the other day that said: “Finding your voice takes time. Be patient with yourself”. I really resonated with that.
We’d love to hear more about your work.
Fiona Buckley Media is a company I started that specializes in videography, video editing, and photography. I’m known and recognized for making creative videos about people expressing their truth. I’m great at capturing the candid moments of people living out their passions, whether it be skateboarding, cliff diving, roaming the outdoors, running, and the flow arts. Evoking emotion and pushing the envelope is what sets me apart from other creators. I like it when I’m done with a project and I watch it 30 times over just because it gives me goosebumps. What I’m most proud of is that I’ve stayed true to the art that fulfills me and I keep rediscovering it everyday, while always being tenacious enough to continue to grow. It’s most rewarding when my work attracts people who share the same joys that I do and we share that joy in a collaborated project.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
One of my favorite memories from childhood is telling my brother, “I betcha can’t make me laugh”. Without fail, no matter how hard I would try not to, he would do some goofy face or noise to make me lose it even if I put a pillow over my face. Every time I think about that, it makes me smile.
Contact Info:
- Website: fionabuckleymedia.com
- Email: fionabuckleymedia@gmailcom
- Instagram: FionaBuckleyMedia
Image Credit:
The personal photo of me was taken by Sydney Prather
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