BLACK RIDER STUDIOS, VISTA, CA - The mirror is an unreliable narrator.

It knows your face too well.

It has seen you tired.

Half awake.

Standing under bathroom lighting designed by someone who apparently hated the human race.

It has watched you stare at the same features thousands of times until eventually you stop seeing anything new.

Then somebody else looks at you.

And they see something completely different.

That's where Noelya and I kept running into each other during this shoot.

She had an idea.

I could see it.

The camera could see it.

The problem was convincing Noelya that the woman we were photographing was actually her.

We photographed Noelya on January 11, 2025, inside our home studio in Vista, California.

This wasn't one of my passion projects where I called somebody and said, I have an idea. Trust me.

This one belonged to her.

Noelya wanted to create something inspired by the 1970s.

She didn't arrive with a twenty-page mood board explaining every reference and historical detail.

She had an idea in her head and wanted to make it real.

Sometimes that's enough.

And then she showed up with the clothes.

Metallic.

Fur.

Attitude.

The wardrobe was completely on point.

She also handled her own hair and makeup, pushing the look even further with bold color and styling that felt like it belonged under disco lights rather than inside a little home studio in Vista.

My job was to figure out how to build the world around her.

Our lighting system isn't exactly young.

Usually that's not something photographers brag about.

Everybody wants the newest light.

The newest camera.

The newest modifier.

Something with Bluetooth, fourteen menus, and an app nobody asked for.

But for this shoot?

Old was useful.

The lighting had a quality that worked beautifully with what Noelya had brought into the room.

The reflective materials.

The metallic jumpsuit.

The warmer tones.

The harder shadows.

The whole thing started feeling less like we were trying to recreate the seventies and more like the equipment had been waiting decades for somebody to finally dress appropriately.

For once, being old was an advantage.

I can relate.

Noelya brought glamour.

Confidence.

Sex appeal.

Attitude.

Fun.

At least that's what I saw.

She didn't always see the same thing.

That's where this session became harder than it looked.

Noelya can be tough on herself.

And that's challenging for me as a photographer because I feed heavily off the person standing in front of my camera.

When someone sees the back of the camera and lights up, something happens in my brain.

Green light.

Keep going.

Push harder.

Try something weird.

Move the light.

Change the pose.

Let's see where this goes.

But when the person doesn't react positively—even when the photograph itself is working—that energy changes.

Now I'm solving two problems.

The photograph.

And the doubt.

There wasn't one magical moment where Noelya suddenly looked at the back of the camera and everything changed.

I wish I could tell you there was.

It would make a cleaner story.

There wasn't.

This was a battle we dealt with throughout the shoot.

We would make something.

Look at it.

Try again.

Change the pose.

Change the technique.

Reshoot.

Move something.

Find another angle.

Keep going.

Not because Noelya was difficult to photograph.

Quite the opposite.

She photographs beautifully.

The difficulty was that she didn't always believe what the camera was showing her.

Those are two very different problems.

And I'm not going to explain where that came from because that's her story, not mine.

What I can say is that she was harder on herself than the woman in those photographs deserved.

Here's where portrait photography gets interesting.

When you hire a photographer, you're not only buying pictures.

You're buying their perspective.

That's what we're selling.

Our version of you.

Not necessarily the version you've been staring at in the mirror for twenty years.

Not the version somebody else convinced you that you were.

Not the version built out of every insecurity you've collected along the way.

My perspective.

I look at you.

I decide what I see.

Then I use light, composition, movement, wardrobe, expression, color, and whatever else I have available to show you.

That requires trust.

You have to buy into what the photographer is selling.

And the product is you.

Or, more accurately, another way of seeing you.

When I looked at Noelya during this session, I didn't just see somebody wearing a great metallic outfit.

I saw a woman trying to figure out what she's about.

A personal odyssey of sorts.

Not lost.

That's different.

She knows there's a road.

She knows she has to travel it.

And I think somewhere inside her she knows there's a destination too.

She's just not standing there yet.

I like that better than pretending every portrait session has to end with some gigantic transformation where somebody walks outside suddenly cured of every insecurity they've ever carried.

Life doesn't work like that.

Photography doesn't work like that either.

Sometimes the photograph is just a signpost.

Look.

This person exists too.

You might not completely believe her yet.

Keep going.

When Noelya saw the finished photographs, she was still hard on herself.

She actually made something very clear to me.

The issue wasn't my photography.

It was the way she viewed herself.

That's a painful distinction.

Because as the photographer, I can change the light.

I can change the pose.

I can change lenses.

I can reshoot.

I can work the photograph until I know I've given everything I have.

What I can't do is climb inside somebody else's head and change the voice speaking back to them.

I wish photographers came with that feature.

We don't.

All I can do is show you what I see.

And what I saw was an amazing woman who had created a killer concept, styled herself beautifully, walked into my studio, and gave me everything I needed to make photographs with glamour, attitude, sensuality, and personality.

Whether she fully believed that yet wasn't something the camera could decide for her.

That's another reason I love this session for Black Rebel Photography.

The seventies inspiration is obvious.

It should be.

But I don't think these photographs work because Noelya looks like she's wearing a costume.

They work because she brought herself into the decade.

That's an important distinction.

Black Rebel isn't supposed to be about dressing people as characters and photographing the disguise.

The era is seasoning.

The person is dinner.

Noelya brought the metallic jumpsuit.

The fur.

The makeup.

The idea.

Then the photographs became about Noelya.

That's where they needed to end up.

The era is seasoning.

The person is dinner.

Noelya brought the metallic jumpsuit.

The fur.

The makeup.

The idea.

Then the photographs became about Noelya.

That’s where they needed to end up.

We’d photographed another side of Noelya before in Becoming Something Unexpected, where Old Hollywood glamour gave her a completely different kind of transformation. This time the language was louder—chrome, fur, disco attitude, and seventies excess—but the challenge was the same: finding a version of Noelya worth showing her.

We've used this little Vista studio to tell some very different Black Rebel stories.

In Alyssa: Unapologetic, the room became stripped-down editorial portraiture—casual styling, attitude, natural light, and very little standing between the person and the photograph.

With She Was Never Meant to Be Tamed, Gigi brought a different kind of energy into the same space: tattoos, confidence, freedom, and that feeling that she belonged completely to herself.

Noelya brought us somewhere else.

Chrome.

Fur.

Disco glamour.

1970s excess.

Same basic idea underneath all of them.

Don't flatten the person until they fit whatever portrait photography is supposedly meant to look like.

Give them room.

See what happens.

I've thought a lot about this session since we made it.

About the strange position photographers sometimes occupy.

We can see something beautiful in somebody and genuinely have no idea why they can't see it too.

But maybe that's okay.

Maybe the photograph doesn't always have to convince you immediately.

Maybe sometimes it gets there before you do.

It waits.

A year.

Five years.

Ten.

Then someday you find it again.

And maybe the person looking at it has traveled farther down that road.

Maybe she looks at that metallic jumpsuit.

That ridiculous fur.

That makeup.

That woman staring back through all that seventies attitude.

And finally thinks:

Damn.

I looked good.

I'll take that.

Black Rebel Photography is for people who want something outside the usual portrait box.

Counterculture.

Rock and roll.

Grunge.

Vintage.

Desert.

Retro.

Raw.

Glamorous when glamour feels right.

Sexy without making sex appeal the entire personality.

And weird enough that nobody mistakes it for the family photograph hanging above your aunt's fireplace.

Noelya brought us an idea.

She trusted us enough to try to make it real.

We fought with it.

Changed things.

Reshot things.

Kept working.

And sixteen photographs later, we had our version of what she brought into that room.

Not who somebody told Noelya she was.

Not even necessarily who Noelya believed she was.

Who we saw.

That's the photograph I'm interested in.

Black Rebel Photography creates editorial, counterculture, vintage-inspired, and alternative portrait sessions in Vista, San Diego County, and throughout Southern California.

You don't need to arrive seeing yourself the way we do.

Sometimes that's why you hire us.

Bring the idea.

Bring the clothes.

Bring the strange concept that's been living in your head.

Bring yourself.

We'll show you what we see.

Come make something different.