About the photographer
Rachel Lyn Lochhead is a Taurus, Libran ascendent with a Pisces Venus in the 6th house and North Node in Cancer, which in part has positioned her well for capturing the beauty and emotions in others with all that Venusian and Neptunian energy. She has taken a strong interest in metaphysical teachings from a young age and believes these learnings have a way of weaving into the way she loves to capture the fusion of spirit in matter through her branding design studio Luminova and also through the way she works in Mystic Muse.
Her work background extends over 20 years in the design industry working in branding, advertising, publishing and media in London, Melbourne, Auckland and her home town in Tauranga. During her years working for a magazine, she has art directed many photoshoots alongside top photographers for musicians, entrepreneurs, and leaders in business communities.
At the end of 2019 a desire to photograph the feminine spirit emerged from her own personal journey exploring feminine and masculine polarities, along with shamanic, soul and archetypal work in the realm of the temple arts.
Mystic Muse invites any male or female bodied human who is currently on a journey of awakening to their soul purpose, wishing to be seen in their unique essence to book a photoshoot with her.
Rachel says she ‘Loves to capture the spirit of people being themselves. Beyond their societal status, beyond their job title, beyond the roles and masks of how they show up in the world. I’m inspired by humans in their aliveness, in their rawness, in their tenderness, in their eros, in their truth.”
Full permission photoshoot sessions, full expression, full power, fully directed by your soul, your shakti, your shiva.
Rachel will priestess and hold space in a safe and respectful way for you to show up and flow with however you wish to express. She is in full service and devotion to capturing the beautiful magic that is within you.
What you will receive will go beyond some beautiful photos of yourself. They will become a living transmission to inspire others to show up more fully, express more authentically and be seen with their masks removed. What you awaken within yourself you awaken in others. That is a gift to humanity.
Rachel Lochhead
Rachel Lochhead is a creative director, photographer and writer whose work explores the intersection of image, embodiment, myth, identity and transformation.
Her own life has moved through a series of profound thresholds: a serious car accident in adolescence, spontaneous collapsed lungs, years of chronic pain and illness, endometriosis and adenomyosis, ruptured ovarian cysts, surgeries, pregnancy loss, unexpected motherhood after a long period of uncertainty, early menopause, and the profound disorientation of marital and familial dissolution all within 44 years of life.
Walking between the worlds of trauma and miracle has become a defining thread of her life.
Alongside the experiences her body has endured, Rachel has also encountered moments of extraordinary intuition, spiritual synchronicity, prophetic knowing and what she describes as divine timing. Through these experiences, and through the practitioners and modalities that supported her healing, she developed a deep understanding of the mysterious territory between what can be explained and what can simply be felt, known or experienced.
These experiences have shaped the way she photographs but more importantly how she sees humans and what truth longs to reveal itself.
For more than twenty-five years, Rachel has worked at the intersection of image, design and meaning. Her photography has evolved beyond creating beautiful photographs into a practice of creating space for women to encounter themselves differently — particularly during periods of transition, reclamation and becoming.
Through Mystic Muse, photography becomes a threshold.
A woman may arrive carrying an identity that no longer fits, a body she has struggled to inhabit, an old version of herself she is ready to release, or a part of herself she has never fully allowed to be seen. The photographic experience offers an opportunity to step outside the familiar and enter another way of seeing.
Rachel is interested in the space between who a woman has been and who she is becoming.
Her approach is intuitive, deeply perceptive and grounded in the belief that there are many selves within us — the woman, the mother, the lover, the wild woman, the maiden, the sovereign, the shadow, the muse. Photography can become a way of bringing these archetypal dimensions into consciousness and giving them form.
Astrology has been another lifelong language through which Rachel understands human experience. She approaches it not as a system of prediction, but as an archetypal language of symbolism, timing, cycles and initiation. It offers another lens through which to explore identity, desire, rupture, transformation and the recurring patterns that shape a life.
At the heart of Mystic Muse is the belief that being seen and witnessed can change the way we see ourselves.
Rachel creates photographic experiences for women who are moving through thresholds — motherhood, separation, grief, reinvention, ageing, awakening, identity shifts, reclamation or simply the quiet knowing that something within them is changing.
Her work is not about creating a perfected version of a woman.
It is about revealing something that is already there.
The sensual.
The powerful.
The vulnerable.
The mysterious.
The untamed.
The becoming.
With a background spanning more than two decades in art direction, design and photography, Rachel brings together her visual eye with her intuitive understanding of human experience to create imagery that feels intentional, evocative and deeply personal.
Mystic Muse is where photography meets mythology.
Where the camera becomes a mirror.
Where the body becomes a landscape.
Where an image can mark a threshold — and remind a woman that she is not only witnessing her life unfold.
She is becoming the woman who will live it.