A photograph shows Francesca Larrain at Miami Beach on July 23, 2017. It preserves a summer outing in the city she called home, but it tells only a small part of her story. Public records trace a path from competitive soccer in South Florida to photography and filmmaking focused on the ocean

Larrain’s work is especially interesting when you look beyond a single photo. She played college soccer, studied international business and later founded creative projects that use aerial and underwater images to draw attention to marine environments. How did those different interests come together? The available sources do not document every step, but they reveal the experiences and projects that shaped her public career.

Francesca Larrain’s Early Life in Miami

Larrain was born on February 28, 1997, according to her Eckerd College athletics biography. The college lists Miami, Florida, as her hometown and St. Thomas Aquinas High School as the school she attended before college. Those details establish her South Florida background, a connection that also appears in her later environmental work.

Eckerd’s profile notes that she enjoyed kayaking, snorkeling and boating. It is tempting to draw a straight line from those interests to her eventual ocean filmmaking, but a biography rarely works that neatly. What the record does show is that time on and around the water was part of her life before she became known for filming it

A Competitive Soccer Career

Before she founded a filmmaking project, Larrain was a soccer forward. At St. Thomas Aquinas, she helped her team win state championships in 2014 and 2015. Her Eckerd biography also credits her with three goals and an assist during her senior high school season.

She continued playing at Eckerd College. As a freshman in 2015, she appeared in 12 matches and earned a place on the Sunshine State Conference Fall Commissioner’s Honor Roll. She was listed on Eckerd’s 2016 roster as a sophomore and studied international business.

These records describe a demanding period of her life without telling us what she thought about every match or what plans she had after college. They show that she balanced athletics and academics while representing her school. That chapter deserves space in her story, even though her later public work took a different direction.

The 2017 Miami Beach Photograph

The photographs published from July 23, 2017, identify Larrain at Miami Beach. They do not document a professional assignment or explain why she was at the beach that day. The image is best understood as a dated glimpse of her in South Florida, rather than evidence of a career milestone.

By itself, an outing photograph cannot show where someone is headed. Looking back from her later projects, however, the Miami setting has a clear place in the story: South Florida was both her hometown region and the starting point for ocean imagery she would go on to create.

How Francesca Larrain Began Filming the Ocean

Larrain has described the start of her drone filming in South Florida in a piece published by Oceanographic. Living near Biscayne Bay in Miami, she began documenting what she saw from above during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. The aerial view let her observe marine life and the surrounding water from a perspective unavailable at street level.

A drone can make a familiar coastline look new. More usefully for Larrain’s work, it can reveal relationships that are difficult to spot from shore: the movement of boats, the shape of seagrass beds and the position of wildlife in the water. In the Oceanographic piece, she and collaborator Bryce Raley describe expanding their focus from the beauty of marine life to visible pressures on its habitat, including plastic and boat tracks

That shift gave her images a purpose beyond scenery. She wanted viewers to see both what made the ocean remarkable and what could harm it. Photography became a way to start a conversation about places close to home.

Fran7Films and the Blue Dream Project

Larrain founded Fran7Films and the Blue Dream Project, platforms associated with aerial photography, video and environmental storytelling. A United Nations World Oceans Day profile identifies her as a filmmaker, artist and social and environmental advocate. It describes the Blue Dream Project’s use of cinematography and aerial views to communicate the natural world’s beauty and the need to care for it.

The Oceanographic account says Larrain developed the platforms with help from Bryce Raley, who studied marine science at the University of Miami. Their work began in South Florida. Rather than relying only on broad messages about the planet, they documented local waters and the changes they observed there.

This combination of art and observation gives Larrain’s career its focus. An image may first catch someone’s eye because it is beautiful. Then it can invite a closer look at the habitat, wildlife or environmental issue within the frame.

Photography, Collaboration and Wider Recognition

Larrain’s film project biography says she has worked with directors, institutions, research groups and nonprofit organizations on social and environmental subjects. It also describes exhibitions of her photography in locations including Dubai, Rome, Cannes and Monte Carlo. These are claims presented in her project biography, rather than a complete independent record of every exhibition.

Her photographs and words also appeared in Oceanographic in a feature titled “Genesis.” The piece combines images of marine life with a call for closer attention to the effects of human activity on the ocean. Seeing her work presented this way helps explain her approach: the photograph draws the reader in, while the accompanying story asks them to consider what is happening beyond its edges.

Expanding Into Music and Short Film

Larrain’s creative work has also included music. A 2025 release of “Song of the Sea” credits her as an artist and singer alongside composer Jhon Carlo Laggui. The release identifies a related music video featuring drone footage by Larrain.

Her short music video Blue Dream, listed as completed in April 2026, credits her as writer, director and producer. In its director’s statement, Larrain describes using aerial drones and underwater filming to document marine environments and bring viewers closer to them. The project brings several parts of her practice together: images, sound, filmmaking and her interest in ocean conservation

A Career Shaped by More Than One Interest

Francesca Larrain’s public story moves through distinct stages. She grew up in Miami, competed in soccer through high school and college, and later built filmmaking platforms centered on the sea. The sources do not explain every personal decision between those stages, so it is better to let the documented work speak for itself.

The 2017 Miami Beach photograph captures one day. Her soccer record, ocean photography and later film projects reveal a much broader life in progress: one shaped by athletics, the South Florida coast and a growing commitment to telling environmental stories through images.