http://www.shiloraynephotography.com/

Shilo Rayne Photography, Burbank, CA (2026)

05/15/2025

So much of my Fine Art work has been centered around my experiences and setbacks that life has thrown at me. Art, for me, was a lifeline. But I am not unique in that sentiment. There are so many other people out there who feel drawn to various forms of visual art, performing art, or a mix of both. The forms of self-expression, escapism, and shared experiences build a community among those who feel isolated in their pain. Art gives people hope.

In February of this year, I had the incredible privilege to capture imagery of Shayna, who wanted to hold a photoshoot for herself to celebrate life and reclaim her identity that felt lost through her diagnosis and treatment for cancer. What was initially diagnosed as Stage II breast cancer that went into remission with treatment, returned, and had advanced to Stage IV.

Shayna had a clear vision of what she wanted from her session with me while giving me creative liberty throughout the process. Shayna has since submitted various photos from our session together to be considered and published for magazines and journals with platforms that uplift the voices of those who are living with cancer and survivorship. One of the images from her session, along with her story, was selected to be featured on the cover of "Wildfire" magazine (third image).

And while I am incredibly proud of the work we have created together, this post is not about me. Instead, I wanted to continue to share Shayna's story. She wrote a piece for the Fine Art picture (first image) below. So, without further delay, I'd like to introduce you all to Shayna Welsh:

"When I approached Shilo about doing this photoshoot, my goal was healing. I was struggling to move on from the version of myself I clung to after my first cancer diagnosis, a version that still held onto the hope of a full recovery, of returning to the life I had before. My dreams were broken, but not fully shattered. Then the cancer came back in my brain.

The second diagnosis leveled me. I had fought so hard to rebuild after the first, but now the reality of stage 4 set in: constant treatment and no finish line. I had to let go of the illusion of getting my old life back. I didn’t recognize myself anymore. I felt like my life had ended. But with time, as the anxiety and fear eased, I realized I needed a way to express what I was feeling.

That’s when the photoshoot idea took shape. I wanted to include elements from my breast cancer journey, to capture the emotional spectrum of it all and to see myself, fully, in this moment. Seeing the photos was incredibly healing. Shilo captured my strength, beauty, and resilience, things I had stopped seeing in myself.

That brings me to this photo, the centerpiece. I had a vision: two versions of me side by side - the me before cancer and the me now. Shilo took that idea and brought it to life. The final image feels like a painting, with embroidered textures. It glows with movement, the blue colors for emotions and the reds for strength. This version of me holds the past version; she’s always with me, a part of me. I carry the weight of both of us.

Shilo didn’t just take my photo, she told my story. She turned my pain, my healing, and my transformation into something beautiful. Through this art, I saw myself again.”

A special thanks to Katie C’etta for recommending me to Shayna. This wouldn’t have been possible without you and I so appreciate it.

Shayna, thank you for entrusting me with helping to tell your story visually.

I’d like to end this with a quote that I hold dearly and felt it was more than fitting for the given story.

“You read something which you thought only happened to you, and you discovered it happened one hundred years ago to Dostoyevsky. This is a very great liberation for the suffering, struggling person, who always thinks that he is alone. This is why art is important. Art would not be important if life were not important, and life is important.” ~ James Baldwin.

04/04/2022

"Another Life"

I remember starting BoJack Horsemen in the summer of 2020. And the last episode of the first season always stuck with me because of what Diane says to BoJack when he gets his big gig as Secretariat but he still feels so empty inside: "That's the thing with life, either you know what you want and then you don't get what you want, or you get what you want and then you don't know what you want."

We think this other life that we have envisioned in our heads will be the most important goal that we need to reach in life. But if we make it to that long, sought out goal we often find ourselves looking around and wondering why we aren't happier. And if we don't reach that final goal we sell our happiness short because we believe that if we had only achieved A, B, and C then, and only then, could we be happy and fulfilled.

I think this quote is important to appreciate from both ends: That sometimes no matter how hard you strive to achieve something great for yourself you'll inevitably fall short or things just dont pan out, but when that does happen there is still so much more that you can appreciate and be grateful for. And when the day does come that you reach that milestone that you set out for yourself it's important to stay grounded while you relish in it. Life is not measured by grand accomplishments and if we placate our happiness on those moments then we either find ourselves underwhelmed when we make it there or we don't allow ourselves to genuinely be happy in other parts of our lives that are more intimate and precious. Don't let the build-up of an idea of how that moment will be overshadow that moment when it actually comes. Take your time with this life, I promise you're doing just fine.

01/25/2022

"Religion"

"I still don't think of God as my betrayer. The servants of God, yes, but servants by their very nature betray. I miss God who was my friend. I don't even know if God exists, but I do know that if God is your emotional role model, very few human relationships will match up to it." ~ Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson

This was the very first time I used my strobes for a Fine Art image. This was a pain to shoot and I didn't get the exact shot I initially had in mind, BUT all in all I'm honestly really happy with how it ended up turning out. Can't wait to start on the next one. I have a lot of ideas for new work.

01/01/2022

"When I Have More Time"

Time

We never have enough of it

Time

Unable to buy it yet we find ways to "buy time"

But we're not really buying time, are we?

We're just postponing obligations, the unknown, the inevitable

Time

We spend more time thinking about what we'd like to do with our time rather than actually doing anything with it

Time

Can Neither be bought nor sold

Some get more than they deserve

Others are cut short

Time

What am I supposed to be doing with it? Writing this?

Daydreaming?

Thinking of what I wish to do with it?

Thinking about others who are my age or younger and what they did with it?

Is what I've done enough or do I need to do more?

Who gets to decide what is time well spent and time wasted?

Time

Creeps in places where you don't even notice it

Dust on your shelves

Bills that are past due

Dirty laundry piling up in the basket

Coffee now gone cold

The lines slowly creeping their way onto my face

It's another friends wedding

Another birthday

Another funeral

Time

Is not just black and white

It is all around us

It is in us

From the day we start to where we leave this place

Time

Will we ever feel like we have enough of it?

Will we get to that goal we've set for ourselves?

Will we do the mundane task in our homes?

Will we tell someone that we love them?

And so we tell ourselves time and time again that we'll get to it

"When I have more time..."

12/23/2021

"A Mutilated Identity"

One of the greatest tragedies in life is to lose your own sense of self and accept the version of you that is expected by everyone else. - K.L. Toth

I can see it: People out here, out here in LA, have a modified identity. Maybe it's just a by-product of the culture of the entertainment industry but at what cost? An identity that is more palatable to the people they meet. One that says I am at the mercy of your perception of me. So we curate our posts and polish our appearances publicly and virtually to portray a version of ourselves that reads as "put-together" and "having-it-all". We're focused on the validation and praise we'll receive if we only put our best foot forward. But in the process of this something gets lost. Our goals, our values, our morals, our sense of self. Every day you wake up and think "who am I going to be today?" "It's only temporary" you say, "Once I feel more comfortable I'll be my authentic self". But that never comes because these people only know you from what you've shown them and when you think about opening up with who you really are, it terrifies you. So you clam up and compartmentalize for another day. Maybe tomorrow.

Eventually, we wear these masks long enough that one day we look in the mirror and don't even recognize ourselves. How exhausted we are to live as someone we are not. And we can't just go back because we no longer know who we're going back to. An identity that is muddled from the mutilations that were made over the years to be more acceptable. Pictures and other memorabilia are just breadcrumbs of a person long gone.

I hope that whatever you do you fight the urge to conform. Who you are as an individual is a gift in and of itself. Never sell out for someone else's approval. Strip everything away and what do you have? If you can still say yourself then you're not lost.

11/27/2021

Self Portrait 2021: "I Know A Place"

This image was inspired by the Muna song "I Know A Place". I love the lines where they sang:

"They will try to make you unhappy

Don't let them

They will try to tell you you're not free

Don't listen

I, I know a place where you don't need protection

Even if it's only in my imagination

Even if our skin or our Gods look different

I believe all human life is significant

I throw my arms open wide in resistance

He's not my leader even if he's my president"

This song really resonated with me because in a post-trump society where there are still polarizing opinions around the LGBTQIA community and having friends and family members who are apart of the LGBTQIA community (and even being bisexual myself, my experience has always been VERY different from my counterparts) I'm very protective of them because every day they go out they risk being hurt for simply existing. While I could say so much about this image and topic I wanted to share the final part that Katie shares in a Times Interview.

'I Know A Place' was never supposed to be a funeral hymn," [Katie] adds. "It was also meant to serve as encouragement for our community to remain vulnerable and kind and hopeful in the face of violence. We cannot build a better world without first imagining what that world might look like, and by creating that space inside ourselves first."

09/14/2021

"I Will Not Forget You"

"I know why we try to keep the dead alive: we try to keep them alive in order to keep them with us. I also know that if we are to live ourselves there comes a point at which we must relinquish the dead, let them go, keep them dead.

Let them become the photograph on the table.

Let them become the name on the trust accounts.

Let go of them in the water." ~ The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion

For a time after my parents passed, I felt when that anniversary came that I needed to post a memorial for them. Remembering their lives while reliving that pain. That if I wasn't in a constant state of grief or exclaiming it on my social media then it meant that I didn't actually miss them. But I do miss them. Not a day goes by where I don't think about them, but I don't feel like I need to convince people of that grief I feel. I think when we lose someone we feel this urge and obligation to share that loss online; every year on the day that they passed, on their birthday, on holidays. There's a fine line we walk of seeming performative or trying to garner attention from others to genuinely sharing that loss with someone else. Is our posting triggering someone else who is working through their own grieving process? There is a fear we hold that if we don't speak of the dead then we don't miss them enough, that we didn't love them enough, and worst of all, that they'll be forgotten, especially by us.

But the truth is, it doesn't say anything about your "lack of love", if anything it shows the layers that come after your grief, it shows the healing. But I am at a point where I don't want to remember their loss as a day of mourning but rather, I want to feel like I can have another life outside of their passing. And for me and my healing, it means keeping it to myself and not making a declaration on social media about how much they are missed.

I want so many of the July 21st's and September 23rd's to be good days for me, not just a day where they were a part of a painful memory. I don't want to feel guilty for those days to mean good things and new opportunities in my life. This year on July 21st was not only the day that my Dad passed 8 years ago, but it was my last day at Starbucks and it was the day I could begin a new chapter of my life in my new home in the state I never thought I would live. It wasn't until the next day that I remembered what the previous day was. I thought, "Should I feel bad for not having noticed?" or "Should I still be locking myself in my room having a breakdown?" The truth is, no. While I miss them every single day, I don't like rehashing the wound when mothers day passes and my Mom is not here or seeing Christmas come and go and I post about my Dad's ever-present absence. What am I doing other than reminding myself of this irreversible tragedy?

When or if I do decide to post about my parents is ultimately up to me, but I think, as of now, it is okay to let my Mom become the urn on the shelf or my Dad to become the t-shirt folded in the drawer, to "let go of them in the water."

04/09/2021

On my way to pay the troll toll

Model:

06/09/2020

"What Lies On the Other Side?"

This is to signify the death of our country's infrastructure, the death of a society, the death of habits. Many things have broken and the seedy underbelly of our flawed way of life has been grossly exposed. People thought we were safe and infallible, that us being in "America" was enough to get us through it, but even the Titanic sinks to its own faulty structure. The foundation of our system was built on sand but we sold it as steel. A false projection of what we wanted to be perceived as, versus what we really were. Our government was not quick to act to take care of its citizens when the pandemic came to a head, but they were quick to assemble militarized cops and the national guard to disband protestors of racial injustice. Where do our priorities lie as a civilization?

We clung to nostalgia to help us survive while lamenting on "better" days. But it is time that we look back on our life through the lens of hindsight. Nostalgia only clouds our judgment and we tend to romanticize a life that was volatile; hindsight allows more clarity for us to remove the blindfold and to not reflect on "what was" but rather learn from the past and focus on "what can be."

What lies on the other side? I don't have an answer for that. For me, I see changes coming, and that there will be hope and healing. Whatever it is, it is far better to take the leap of faith and strip our old ideas and beliefs from their bearings. It does no good to try and revive the life we had before this; that life has passed and cannot be resuscitated. Some things are better left dead. There is no better time to welcome change than at this moment right here. We said this was our year to be innovative and fearless, so seize this opportunity to be bold and brave. Change is uncomfortable but it has to start with us before we can expect to see it anywhere else. It is time for a rebirth, to let the curtain fall on our period of mourning and begin finding the ways that we can start living.

05/26/2020

"A Piranesi Nightmare"

Limits: To the eyes, to our innovative expression, to our imagination. Our minds built prisons around the ambitions and dreams we held, constricted to only see the reality and stressors of everyday life.

As an artist, it felt like we were stripped entirely of our autonomy and converted to another belief system. A system that only let you see the world as it was in front of you and not the world that it could be or that we could dream of. Dreams turned into nightmares, and nightmares quickly turned into reality. A never-ending cycle that we couldn't escape; it stunted our momentum and ambition to create. Our traditional outlets to express ourselves were erased without any reference point on how to move forward personally, emotionally, and creatively. And how do we know what we are capable of if we do not give ourselves a chance?

A sentiment that artists have shared is that they are worried that they will never get a chance to tell their story again. But human beings are storytellers by nature. It is how we inspire, persevere, and survive. Storytelling is one of the few things that endure. Do not let the multiplicity of suffering infect your mind with the idea that this is the end of the road, for you and your craft. It is only a detour because we are not dead yet. And while we cannot create or perform in the same way that we had done in the past, it doesn't mean that we cannot put our ideas out there. Take those thoughts and write them down, make it something that you can touch and hold, so that you can remind yourself that what you're longing for is not far off, it is only going to look different for some time. If there is anything that artists can do, it is that we can transform our pain into our work. We perform with it, we paint with it, we dance with it, we capture it. Losses are nothing new to us, only the type of losses that we face.

Do not let the circumstances that we are in be the fuel to the fire that is burning the artistry left in you away.

Our fate does not end on the pyre; the rises far outweigh the distances we have fallen. We just have to remember to get back up even when there is nothing left but ashes. Take hold of what remains in spite of it all, use that to ignite your motivation to persist and move forward with your work and watch it burn.

05/19/2020

"The Persistence of Time"

Time is a funny thing; how it moves at the same pace yet that pace always seems to be fluctuating depending on our circumstances. We all felt it drag the first few weeks we all received the stay-at-home order, and then April seemed like it was a catalyst to how fast it could go. We couldn't slow it down, or even try to catch up with it.

We've gained time and yet in that same stroke, we lost it all the same. It feels tangible when we hold it in the form of a clock or a pocket watch like we have control in how it moves, but in reality, it is a concept that we are powerless to and cannot stop no matter how tightly we hold down the hands.

Life felt as if it had stopped, as it does when tragedies happen, but the passing of time does not. When the sun rises the next day, do we lament on the days we lost behind us and try to make up for it, or do we accept the time that is available and figure out how to make the best of it so that we can move forward with it?

I remember writing a letter to a friend a while back and adding a quote at the end of it from a book I had: "She throws down the map and shouts at Gertrude: 'THIS IS THE WRONG ROAD.' Gertrude drives on. She says, 'Right or wrong, this is the road and we are on it.'", Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Normal When You Could Be Happy? I add this in because right now, everything about this period we are in feels wrong, and it is wrong, but just because it does not feel right or that it isn't fair, doesn't mean it's going to change. And even though this is how it is right now, it doesn't mean it will always be this way. Time is persistent, but we must be too in order to survive.

05/12/2020

"The Decay of Self-Isolation"

People are growing restless to get out and "be free" again. Some say it's comparable to prison but this is not a life sentence; this is a temporary period of isolation and change in our way of life. It is not the same.

Our liberties are not at stake, but the health of ourselves and our society is. This is not about "give me liberty or give me death" this is about "give me an open economy and give them death." We know whose lives and well-being are really being dramatically affected by this.

You're armed to the teeth to protest your "rights" when all you're asked is to stay inside. You are not a hero or a fearless figure for "taking a chance" to execute your first amendment right to cry about how you are entitled to get a haircut, or go to the beach, or stop in a bar. No, quite the contrary actually. You are a coward. It is selfish and destructive to others for them to put their lives on the line so people like you can have a sense of "normalcy" again.

Ask yourself, "What is the price of a human life?"

A haircut?
A manicure?
A dine-in restaurant experience?

Maybe its nothing.

COVID-19 deaths in the US: 81,000+

COVID-19 infections in the US: 1.38M+

To some of you, this is just a number, but to many others, this was a loved one, a coworker, a friend. We must never forget that. Who speaks for those lost voices? Do not wait for it to affect you in order to care, we must change the conversation.

If America has been great at anything thus far, it is having the highest death rates, that could have been prevented, from this virus. If we open our economies too early then we are essentially opening the door for the Coronavirus to infect and kill more people, remember that.

"Mourn the dead, and fight like hell for the living."

Shilo Rayne Photography

05/15/2025

04/04/2022

01/25/2022

01/01/2022

12/23/2021

11/27/2021

09/14/2021

04/09/2021

06/09/2020

05/26/2020

05/19/2020

05/12/2020

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