Personal Brand Photography Archives - Professional Rebel

Personal Brand Photography: An Ace Study – Rosa Lisa, The Light Within

“I want you to capture how I feel inside.”

If you’re doing this whole human experience properly, you can’t have the joy, the beauty and the all the wonderful highs, without all the pain, sadness and loss – it’s the duality of our existence and it is what makes being a human so goddamn freaking special. The moments of light and love would not shine as brightly without having experienced the utter darkness that can surround us at times.

It’s no secret, but like most of us here, Lisa has her own tale of hardship. It’s not my story to tell here, and like myself, she’s not one to dwell on those parts of our experience, but she is now in a place where she wanted to celebrate where she is at after a period that caused her to crack open, leave the parts that no longer fitted behind and be the person she was destined to become.

She has let her journey inspire her business and life and she wanted new photographs to show her spirit in a way that words aren’t always able to do.

And as words fail me here myself, I’ll let the photos (or Lisa) do the talking.

“Oh to see the world through your eyes for a day! You have such a special gift, the world needs more you you. You really do create magic.”

“I don’t have any reference images. I have pictures in my head which I can try to describe but I find it hard to choose the words. I’m a feeling-being so I feel – the emotions I want you to capture are: fun, hope, inspiring, magical and mystical.”

We had such a giggle on this shoot.

Both Lisa and I are ex-party girls, we’re potty mouthed and always up for breaking a rule or two (as long as it doesn’t harm anybody) – like climbing onto some ancient church ruins just to get the shots we envisioned before running off before we got into trouble.

It’s a common misconception that if you’re spiritual, you’re all love and light and not much else. I think that kind of fluffiness that puts a lot of people who are perhaps curious about spirituality off. I know I was in the closet for a long time but I think it’s important to show people you can be up for a bit of synchronicity and swearing, divine guidance and shouting c*nt when you stub your toe – again, it’s all about duality 😉

As well as being a very gifted light worker, assisting and mentoring people through their own awakening journey, she is the owner of Chester’s finest pole dancing school, Apsara Dance.

I know Pole dancing still has a bit of a stigma depending on who you talk to but it is thanks to this woman, that myself and others in the area are leaving behind the shame society has told us to have about our perfectly flawed bodies. She gives women permission to feel good about their physical form, to feel strong, beautiful and fearless which happens to be her company’s motto #StrongBeautifulFearless and to celebrate who they are as a person. I honestly never thought I’d hang my large bottom off a metal pole in my lifetime.

She also regularly arranges pole showcases to raise money for local charities too. She really is a good egg.

I’m so grateful our paths crossed at a wedding I photographed in Paris a few years ago.

And as you can probably see your yourself, both our work is incredibly aligned and synergetic so watch this space for a cheeky collaboration or two in the near future.

You can find out more about the work Lisa does as a healer here and her pole dance studio here.

Oh, and here’s what she said about our shoot:

“This lady right here is magical!!! ✨✨✨

If you’ve ever met Professional Rebel in person I’m sure you would agree she is full of love, light, happiness & amazing amounts of energy. She lights up any room she walks in & always has the biggest, most beautiful smile on her face.
And I was fortunate enough to have her photograph me.

After asking only a few questions beforehand Maz understood exactly what I was looking for
When I saw the pictures last night my eyes filled with happy tears ?

Not only did this lady make me feel relaxed in front of the camera, she made me forget it was there, it was like having a nice day out in nature with a friend.

The suggestions she made throughout the day brought me out of my shell & then boom! She captured me in all my glory, the real me.

This lady has a gift, a beautiful way of seeing people & the world & a talent to capture those precious moments.

I am overwhelmed by these pictures, I am so honoured to know this beautiful human & I can’t wait til we work together more in the future.

Maz – I honestly can’t thank you enough! ♥️♥️♥️”

And if you’d like to arrange a chat with me to see how I can combine all the elements of your sparkly spirit into a personal branding photoshoot for your business, please drop me an email here.

Personal Brand Photography: An Ace Study – Annette Khepri, Conscious Leadership Coach

Sometimes what we do as an entrepreneur can be really hard to put into just a few words.

Especially when we’re multi-talented, multi-faceted individuals on a super personal mission to change the world.

In my branding shoots, I tend to work with people who have many interests, talents and life experience so colourful, that often times they would span lifetimes of your average person – you know, the sorts of people you meet and you think to yourself ‘how on earth have you fitted all of that into one life time?!’

Annette is most definitely one of these people.

From running a martial arts academy and using all sorts of scary weapons during fights, she now uses that ancient knowledge and discipline to mentor conscious entrepreneurs and creative thinkers who want to change the world. She is also a single mum of two, has travelled the world, performed on stage as a singer and poet and describes herself as being a bit of an adrenaline junkie, having done various things for charity and good causes.

When we chatted about what ‘vibe’ she wanted in her images, there were plenty of elements that she wanted me to capture that day.

“So a bit of mystery is quite nice for the whole Dojo journey aspect. But it’s tricky because I need to use [them] for social media and the website. I’d like some shots to be able to use as and when needed.

It’s also a bit difficult as the Bushido / Spiritual Alchemy side is quite serious – like when I ran The TAO Academy. As a Master Instructor I had to be firm but at the same time my Gemini side does like to have fun too and I try and break things down and be lighter with them.

Vibe wise – gosh it’s hard as I don’t like having my pic taken but I guess I would say a bit of a mixture really, some a bit fun and happy, some fitting to the Dojo and Temple work so the mystery and a little serious in the sense of I take everyone I work with very seriously, I am here to help and I don’t take that lightly, so it’s important to me that people feel safe, can trust me and can totally be themselves which includes the yin and yang of whatever that might be, tears, laughter, deep stuff, funny things – whatever comes up really!”

She also wanted some relaxed photos of herself and her girls to send to friends and family too.

And whist this all sounds very serious and the photos from the day look very peaceful and enigmatic, what actually happened outside of the frame, behind the scenes that day truly was something I wish I had a video of. If not for the shock and entertaining value of what went on that day but also to highlight the old adage of working with animals and children too!

You see Annette travelled up from near Cornwall to come work with Jane and I. She came up with her two girls and 6-month-old wolf puppy for the day – though he doesn’t look like a baby at all, he’s HUGE.

She wanted her dog, Guardian to be in the photos with her as she also mentioned showing a shamanic healer element to her work.

It was quite the house full once they all arrived to get ready at Jane’s house. Jane decided to put her own rather large dog out into the back garden – she wasn’t sure how he’d react with another big dog in the house.

Annette wanted to say hello to Jane’s dog but was bitten, not once but twice on both forearms!

She came in looking rather pale and looking as if she was about to pass out. Now, I know Annette quite well. She is nails and I know it would take something quite serious to knock her from her usual balanced and composed self.

Jane was mortified as you can imagine – her dog, who is normally fine with her and all of her children must have just panicked at the scent of another fairly large doggo.

The dog bites had not only broken the skin but also punctured muscle and you could even see bone! As she’s travelled so far to work with us, she said going to the hospital was out of the question, and just cleaned up her wounds and put plasters on her arms and continued to get ready.

And I thought I was someone who just grinned and beared things!!!

We then continued on to Wepre Park, North Wales to do the shoot with an, at times, weary Annette, and an excitable wolf pup who would run all over the place, knocking the girls over in excitement or jump in the stream unable to sit still for more than a split second.

I am honestly surprised we managed to get him to sit still long enough for this photo!!!

Annette managed really well with her injuries throughout the shoot, until we decided on some martial arts stances. Thanks to a bit of gravity and the force of her arm movements, a load of blood ended up rushing to her forearms and her wounds started to bleed and swell up. And as the ninja she is, she still insisted we continue through it all!

Despite the long travel, the chaos before and during the shoot – we did really well to hide this in the finished images and I’m very proud that I was able to convey all the elements Annette asked for in our pre-shoot meeting. A bit of cheeky photoshop helped to hide the plasters, swelling and blood too!

And after a long drive home, she did eventually get those injuries looked into and has made a full recovery.

Find out more about how working with me can bring out your inner badass, warrior spirit. Just drop me an email or use the contact page on the website. I adore bringing what I see so the rest of the world can experience you in your true epic glory x

If you’d like to find out more about what Annette does, I can highly recommend her.

She works with people who are maverick, different and entrepreneurial who want to make a difference and challenge the status quo.

Have a look at her website here.

I highly recommend the lovely Jane, an award winning hair and make up artist who also has a huge heart and is on a mission to make the world a better place. She is also great fun to work with. She’s very silly like me so we always have heaps of fun when we’re together. Take a look at what she does here.