Raquel Aranda
forever home behind the lens…
Raquel Aranda is a West Australian freelance photographer, capturing creativity through sensitive and explorative photography of moments at the intersection of the ordinary and poetic.
Strong values and a commitment to genuine connection, guide every photography project; the common theme is always the same: creating insightful visual imagery that inspires, connects, and tells a really good story.
Portraits of Raquel by Rae Fallon
All the things I’ve done in my life have brought me to the point I am at now. I feel I’m at the peak of my creativity, doing my dream job and honestly, it feels at times, rather surreal.
My upbringing was super strict, and culturally I had a foot in two worlds, but from a young age, I remember I was always creating - whether I was painting or drawing on my bedroom walls as a child or taking art and film photography later on in school. I also decided to take short courses in mosaics and pottery. However, my current craze is free-motion embroidery.
When I look back at the roles I’ve had in my life – mother, florist, freelance stylist, and facilitator for a variety of community and disability organisations - I believe the work I do now, my client work in particular, brings all those skills and experiences together.
I’ve always owned a camera and before becoming a professional I would take images of the flower arrangements I created. One of my favourite things in this floristry business was the stories and reasons for offering flowers. I’d listen or read the reasons, then write notes and kind words on notecards ready for delivery. This became something I then shared a snippet of throughout my marketing – the stories. People loved to read those stories on social media. At the same time, I was also doing photography for myself; the kids and family, holidays, food or anything beautiful that caught my eye but for some reason at that time I didn’t see photography as a ‘real job’ option for me.
When I made the very intentional decision to pick up the camera as a professional it became my new world. I returned to full-time study; I was so focused on learning the technical photo imaging world – creatively I knew that side would work itself out. And I fell deeply in love with photography – especially with the variety – but in the beginning I was terrified I’d get bored of it. I was also carrying shame around the closing of my floristry business, I had this sense that I had failed big and trying to heal from that was difficult and long.
What would people say now I was doing this new thing? This new thing that I knew was finally MY forever thing.
I don't know that I’d have been able to do this job at this level 20 years ago, I hadn’t grown the skills yet - specifically the people skills. I hadn’t learned the way to nurture conversations, to listen or to guide people in feeling comfortable in front of my camera.
The recurring themes in the feedback I get from my images from both my client and personal projects are that there’s a sense of being authentic, organic and emotive. I’m really happy about that, nothing could be worse to me than appearing ‘fake’.
These heartfelt responses have steadily given me the confidence to ‘come out of hiding’ I am in the midst of a rebrand and stepping into my own name creatively is part of this journey.
Through this process the best advice I’ve received is to stop separating my client work and my creative work – they do not have to live in two separate and exclusive worlds. Whether it’s professional imagery or photographs for personal projects, it all comes through me and so it makes so much more sense to be under this one creative umbrella that is my name. When a client books me – they get all of me; I'm creating especially for them.
I hope people feel something when they see an image of mine. I would love for them to think, ‘Oh, I want to learn more about this person, go there, to sit there or eat that or do this, or experience that.’ And my ultimate goal is to create this emotive response to my imagery – both for my clients and for my personal projects.
However, I’ve learned from this experience, that it can feel noisy out there in the business world, and that in listening to the noise we can often lose the confidence to move forward with our own judgment and end up second-guessing our every move.
My professional work and my personal work – how I view the world - collide in terms of my style of photography; it's emotive and there’s a strong storytelling narrative that is woven through all that I do. Through conversation and creative exploration, I champion creative businesses and create memorable imagery that helps people show up in their own stories and business journeys.
I find the business part of my work the most difficult. I wish I could just create and dream, but the reality of being a sole trader in business is that you’re constantly upskilling until you can outsource, and this flow interferes with my creating and dreaming – it is a constant juggle personally.
I’ve always felt too sensitive. And maybe that’s the result of that powerful feeling of displacement as the child of immigrants in a new and strange country. That feeling has never left me really; that I never quite belong or fit in.
That sensitivity has followed me my whole life and now I use it to find beauty everywhere in the everyday and I want to bring that to others through my photography. I think finding grace and beauty is something that we can all incorporate into our lives every day; beauty in a moment, a thing, a place, a space or a person.
I’ve always known deep down, despite my insecurities and these feelings of being the ‘outsider’, that my work is deeper than normal. It makes people feel something, and I want that to do the talking.
Portraits of Raquel by Rae Fallon
To find out more about Raquel or follow her @raquelarand.a on Instagram
