Learn Italian: Faccio una foto con il telefono. - I am taking a photo with the phone.

The verb fare is used in many Italian expressions where English uses a completely different verb. To say 'to take a photo', Italians say fare una foto (literally 'to make a photo'). Faccio is the irregular 'I' form of this verb, so it means 'I make' or, in this case, 'I am taking'.

Why does foto use the feminine word for 'a' (una) if it ends in '-o'?

Foto is actually an abbreviation of fotografia, which is a feminine noun. In Italian, shortened words keep the gender of the original long word, so it stays feminine and uses una.

The translation says 'I am taking', but does not faccio just mean 'I take'?

In Italian, the present tense covers both simple actions ('I take') and continuous actions happening right now ('I am taking'). You can just use faccio for both meanings, depending on the context without needing a separate '-ing' form.

Can I combine con and il into a single word here?

Yes, sometimes you will see con and il combined into col. However, keeping them separate as con il is very common and perfectly correct in modern Italian.