Frank Marshall was born on 30 July 1985 in Nelspruit, Mpumalanga, South Africa as the child of an Irish father and a South African mother. He grew up in Kroonstad, Free State and Pretoria, Gauteng. As a teenager Marshall started to show interest in hard rock and heavy metal music, mostly influenced by established American bands. After finishing high school Marshall started his studies of photography at Tshwane University of Technology in Pretoria in 2007. In 2010 he obtained his Bachelor of Technology degree in photography from Tshwane University. For his final year thesis Marshall portrayed people of Botswana’s heavy metal subculture and put the images together in his exhibition “Renegades”. For his work on “Renegades” he was nominated as one of ten finalists of the Sony World Photography Awards Student Focus Competition. He was the first South African to reach the finals of the renowned photography competition.