Raffealla Fernando, one of Sri Lanka’s best known conceptual photographers, recently marked the launch of her 10th annual Raffealla Fernando Celebrity Calendar (RFCC). Each year, award-winning photographer Fernando throws herself into conceptualising this personal passion project of hers, releasing her first-ever RFCC in 2013.
Ten consecutive years of any project is indeed a milestone to remember, especially when it is a passion project that you take on simply because it’s something that interests you, so we chatted with Raffealla on what 10 years of the RFCC has been like.
The first thing Raffealla shared about 10 years of the RFCC was how good it feels to have reached this milestone. “It’s something I started back in 2013 and I never thought I would reach 10 years. The RFCC is not my bread and butter; I work across three other industries, but looking from the first calendar to now, it feels like such a big achievement. I’ve worked with over 150 celebs over the last 10 years. It’s such a blessing to have been able to work with so many amazing people over such a short time in the industry,” Raffealla said, reflecting on her many years of doing the RFCC.
The 10th edition of the RFCC, the 2022 calendar, was launched at a gala event at The Kingsbury Colombo, a launch that Raffealla explained was her biggest to date. In fact, the whole 2022 calendar was in many ways her biggest to date, with 29 celebrities featured across 24 separate photoshoots. “I usually shoot the RFCC over 12 months; this time it was two shoots each month,” Raffealla explained, saying: “It was a big production. There were lots of new concepts and new techniques and I used a larger crew than before. Overall, it’s bigger in many ways than last year’s calendar. We’ve evolved in a very good way.”
The RFCC calendar began when Raffealla noticed that while many other countries have celebrity calendars which are often in great demand, Sri Lanka had nothing of that kind. “I thought ‘why not here?’ and then in 2013 I tried it out with the first RFCC – it was a digital calendar with a simple layout and I put it on my Facebook (we didn’t have Instagram then), and it was taken in a very good way,” Raffealla said, adding: “It was a new thing for Sri Lanka and since it was conceptual photography, it looked very different. We did our first printed copy in 2015 and then began printing and distributing copies from 2016 and having our launch events for the calendar. Our first launch event was at an art gallery – a simple event that took place in the morning. It started out very simply and now it’s grown and it’s amazing to see that change and see it happening on a grand scale now.”
Speaking further on the growth of the RFCC over the last 10 years, Raffealla said that the RFCC’s growth reflected her own growth as a conceptual photographer and vice versa. “I usually work internationally, and working internationally is like going for a masterclass,” Raffealla shared, adding: “You work with the best people and you learn so much, and the last two years, I’ve not been able to do that and it’s been really hard. But I’ve also had to up my game regardless. I’ve been researching and trying out new stuff and continuing to improve as a conceptual photographer. When I look back at the 2013 calendar, I can see such a difference and evolution in my technique, my lighting, my composition, my retouching, all of that.”
With 10 years of the RFCC behind her, we asked Raffealla what some of her most memorable RFCC moments have been, and Raffealla humorously recounted some of her most bizarre shoots, from a shoot in Ingiriya with Samanalee Fonseka where the crew was terrified to find their site infested with leeches (Fonseka was unperturbed) and had to shoot despite continually worrying a leech might latch on to them, to another shoot, also in Ingiriya, where the bulk of their props were unceremoniously stolen by a flock of 14 monkeys and they had to shoot with reserve and emergency props.
Another one of Raffealla’s standout moments from 10 years of the RFCC was when one of the shoots from her very first RFCC, a shoot focused around vegetables, went viral – the first time something like that had happened to her. “Photographers are more artists who work behind the scenes,” Raffealla said, adding: “But this shoot went viral – it became the talk of the town and it was the first time I saw that kind of attention.”
One thing that really stood out from our chat with Raffealla is that the RFCC is truly still a passion project, with the digital version of the calendar being available for download from Raffealla’s online channels by the end of this week, and a limited edition of print copies made by Raffealla to circulate within the industry and with a few dedicated fans. “It’s a collaborative project that I do, somewhat for the development of the industry, and for my own artistic development. There is no financial benefit from the calendar, so many of the people who work on it do it free of charge because of their passion for art, and you can never put a price on art.”
