Photographer Sara Frances looks for truth through her camera viewfinder.

Frances, who has been taking photographs for six decades, also keeps busy as a writer, author, publisher, traveler and Denver homemaker, among other pursuits. During a recent interview at her University Park home on a sunny afternoon, Frances was amped about publishing, literature, history and the future.

A professional photographer since 1972, Frances enjoys travel, she’s versed in international photography and photojournalism. As a writer, she’s penned magazine stories, web articles and books.

A lifetime member of the Professional Photographers of America, Frances teaches photography workshops at OLLI (Osher Lifelong Learning Institute), a continuing education program through the University of Denver, for adults over age 50. She’s been recognized by the PPA for having received 100 teaching awards from the organization over the course of her teaching career.

The owner of Photo Mirage Books, founded in 2018, Frances has self-published several photo books including “Fragments of Spirit: 60 Years: A Photographers Recollections of Taos Pueblo, the Region and its Arts”. She champions photo-art book design.

Frances first went to Taos Pueblo, New Mexico, as a child in the late 1950s with her family. It was the start of a lifelong love affair with a magical place, its people, architecture, landscape and culture.

“I was just agog,” Frances recalled. “I was absolutely fascinated.”

Frances discovered the camera as a young woman while an exchange student at Heidelberg University in Germany. She earned a master’s degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder in comparative literature.

“At first I really didn’t know what it was all about, but I loved looking through the viewfinder,” Frances recalled. “I discovered that the camera wasn’t a barrier, it just happened to start conversations. I pointed it at people and it became an in.”

Frances has been pointing cameras at folk ever since, including thousands of brides and grooms.  She’s photographed more than 4,000 weddings and events and has authored and published books on weddings, wedding photography and wedding dresses.

Wendy Walberg, a local attorney, first met Frances in 1980 when she hired the wedding photographer. The women became friends, and Frances has been taking professional photographs of Walberg and her family every since.

“There is never a time when you interact with Sara when you are not fascinated by what she is doing,” Walberg said. “She is just expressive, and entertaining and engaging. She has great ideas and lot of enthusiasm. She is enthusiastic about everything.”

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Over the years Frances photographed Walberg’s sister’s wedding and their mother’s 80th birthday celebration. When Walberg’s eldest daughter, Erin, died in 2017, Frances combed her photo archives and produced a photo of Erin that is among Walberg’s dearest keepsakes.

“All of my bookshelves are filled with photos taken by Sara,” Walberg said. “I adore her and consider her my friend. She knows my family and she’s always been there, over a lot of time and a lot of places.”

When taking photographs, Frances goes a bit old school, she still prefers to peek through a viewfinder rather than view an LCD display. Still, she enjoys, practices and excels at virtual editing of photographs, in contrast to her viewfinder habit. Frances also embraces taking photographs with iPhones, a practice she often relies on. She experienced radical change in photography.

“I use to develop film” in a darkroom with liquid chemicals, Frances recalled. “It was a disaster, I had allergies, I would get nasty red hives. I was very glad to move into the computerized world, although it wasn’t easy. This is what’s so exciting, that there is always something new. I’m a pixel surgeon now.”

Whether photographing a wedding or an event, or taking photographs entirely of her choosing, at her leisure for pleasure or as a photo journalist for an upcoming book, she has several in the works, Frances, like most photographers, if not all, pursues basic core principles.

“The light is really exciting,” she said as brilliant sunlight streamed into a room at her home. “Getting to the right place at the right time and knowing what your are going to see is crucial. This shooting business is pretty serious. Do you ever sweat and get nervous when you’re shooting? I still do.”

As Frances thumbs through her book on the Taos Pueblo, she has fond recollections of her work, where it has taken her and the people she has met, including friendships she’s nurtured.

“It was 60 years in the making,” she said proudly. “Now it’s a big deal, it is history.”

Frances and her husband, Karl, remodeled their Denver home, converting a brick residence into an adobe dwelling. Karl, an artist who works in metal design and fabrication, built and installed unique, eye-catching downspouts on their home’s exterior. The couple loves Denver and has no desire to live anywhere else, but they’re thrilled with the pueblo look they’ve given their home.

“Artists, writers and everyone in the West love adobe,” Frances said.

Her book, Fragments of Spirit, published in 2020, is: “Dedicated to the Taos People and the wonderous place that is their home — and to all those who would preserve the heritage and dignity of Indigenous Peoples everywhere.”

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