I am Rachel a photographer based in London UK, who specialises in Portraits and Personal Branding giving women the opportunity to show themselves how they are.

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It’s hard to imagine yourself at 50 when you’re young, and here I’m reaching 53! I remember when my grandmother reached 50, the way she was at the end of the 70s and seeing me now sounds like a million years ago.

Our generation didn’t grow up with a lot of women role models over 50; a lot of actresses i.e. Brigitte Bardot quit the screen at 40, 50 was more like the end of everything!

I was lucky to have a mum and her friends to look up as role models at 50, independent, having fun, looking after themselves enjoying being women.  They made 50 much less scary than it could look like.

I certainly feel privileged living in a time where 50 is not the end but the start!  The opening of life where I can finally focus on myself and follow my true path. I’ve to admit, turning 50 was scary for a moment. I was wondering if everything would go downhill from now, then I looked at women I admired in their 70s, my mum, Helen Mirren, Joanna Lumley, this was not the time to give up and pack my bags away but standing in the limelight rather!

Photography was a long life dream for me, but instead, I followed reason over heart and stepped into a traditional career path, until I realised that if I don’t embrace my dream now, I might live with regrets.  I left my job, decided to go back to university to study photography. In 2013 I met a fashion photographer in her 70s during a photography workshop in Paris, she saw what I didn’t and encouraged me to become a portrait photographer.

In 2015 I established myself as a portrait photographer my aim is to create beauty through photography. I love giving women the opportunity to embrace their true self in front of the camera, celebrate who they are and show them how beautiful they are, whatever their age.

Since turning 50, I have embraced a new lifestyle, eating paleo, practising yoga, swimming. I have to make more effort to be in shape, but it’s all worth it. I feel so different inside from the women; I was in my 20s where I couldn’t see how beautiful I was so focused on what other people would think of me, trying to be the lovely girl and pleasing everyone.

Turning 50 has given me the freedom to be the women role model I want to be for my boys and younger women; I’m grateful to have reached this age and be among a community of wonderful badass who are shaking the world!