By Rihaab Mowlana

When I first launched The Disruptor Series a few years ago, the goal was to spotlight people who refused to play by the rules - the builders, the risk-takers, the ones who shook up industries and carved new paths. After a pause, the series returns with a name that’s cleaner, sharper, and closer to what it always set out to be. Disruptors isn’t a reinvention, but a refinement: a reminder that these stories aren’t just about success, but about the grit, resilience, and imagination it takes to get there. Because disruption isn’t only about breaking rules. It’s about daring to dream differently and creating space for others to follow.

I met Raffealla Fernando at a coffee shop, voice recorder perched between us, and within minutes, I understood why she had to be the one to relaunch this series. Her story isn’t a neat rise to the top. It’s messy, stubborn, and laced with the kind of resilience that makes disruption possible.

The first thing you notice about Raffealla isn’t her camera or even her clothes; it’s the energy. Sitting across from her, it felt less like an interview and more like being swept into a story already in motion. She spoke fast, laughed often, and dropped lines so sharp they could have doubled as captions. “I was the below-average kid,” she shrugged, describing how dyslexia kept her from reading or writing properly until the age of ten. Yet in the same breath, she was talking about the celebrity calendar that has become an institution in its own right. The arc between those two points is what makes her a disruptor: from a child written off as talentless to a woman who has redefined the visual language of Sri Lankan photography.

Growing up, she was never the star student. She was the curious one, trying every club and activity, failing at most of them but stubbornly showing up anyway. Teachers labelled her “not good at anything.” Her sister was studious, her classmates found their lanes, but Raffealla hovered on the margins, restless. The difference was her parents. In Sri Lanka at the time, dyslexia wasn’t a word anyone used. Teachers had no framework for it, and most parents would have mistaken it for laziness. Her mother instinctively knew her youngest daughter needed kindness more than pressure. She never demanded report cards or grades; she gave space. Her father turned that belief into action. When her photograph was rejected by her school for a competition, he drove to the host school himself and entered it under her name. Out of all the submissions, hers was the one that won. It was a small rebellion with a huge payoff: for the first time, she realised she might actually be good at something.

Fashion design came first. It was the career she named at every parent-teacher meeting, the answer that made teachers roll their eyes and her mother defend her right to dream. Photography arrived more like an accident, born in the schoolyard when she snapped portraits of her bandmates and drama club friends in full makeup, and later cemented during her final year as a fashion student. She needed photos of her garments, couldn’t afford the photographers she admired, and so she did it herself. The results surprised her. They surprised others, too. That SLR camera and a dose of stubbornness gave her a new language.

Her early work was raw, often gothic, sometimes too extra for the market at the time. Clients wanted safe pictures; she wanted bold concepts. So she built a portfolio on the side, creative portraits that nobody was paying for, but that made her itch to experiment. Social media did the rest. ETV spotted her images and hired her for a celebrity series. Then came her first international break, courtesy of a hashtag. Searching for “Colombo photographer” brought her to the attention of Bollywood producers, who booked her for her first paid overseas project.

But the grind was brutal. For seven years, she faced rejection after rejection, doubted herself constantly, and wrestled with the financial strain of freelancing. She was a young woman in a field dominated by older men; her style was unconventional, and her age was often used against her. “They’d ask me a million questions before hiring me, as if I had to prove myself twice over,” she recalled. There were months with no work, months when she wondered if she should quit. Instead, she doubled down. She stopped designing and committed fully to photography. When carrying a team wasn’t sustainable, she worked solo, learning every cable, every light, every setup herself.

The struggle eventually paid off. In 2017, she became the first and only Sri Lankan to win Best Fashion Photographer of the Year at the International Achievers Awards in London. That same year, she was ranked among the Top Ten Photographers of the World at the BEFFTA Awards, shortlisted from more than 300 photographers worldwide. A year earlier, she had already been nominated at the New York Fashion Awards. For someone once dismissed as “not good at anything,” these accolades were more than trophies; they were proof she had carved her own place on the global stage.

That recognition gave her the confidence to push boundaries at home, too. She built South Asia’s first all-girls photography team, not as a gimmick, but as a response to years of rejection. It was a statement: women could run a set top to bottom without excuses. Today, that team is capable, respected, and symbolic; disruption as both statement and practice.

And the milestones kept coming internationally. She became the first Sri Lankan to showcase at London Fashion Week, designing for the House of iKons during the 40th anniversary of Prince Charles’s charity trust. She styled Maitri Priska for the Cannes Film Festival red carpet, and in 2011 became the first Asian designer invited to Nolcha New York Fashion Week. She collaborated with Italian designer Laura Conti on a lookbook that launched across continents and was part of Manish Arora’s “Fish Fry” launch forum in Sri Lanka.

The calendar, meanwhile, became her most enduring project. In 2013, she released her first, cobbled together from leftover shots, just for fun. By 2015, she was printing and launching with a small gallery show. Word spread. Makeup artists began getting booked for looks inspired by her shoots, and brands noticed. Next year will mark the 14th edition of her celebrity calendar, featuring 24 pictures annually and, in recent editions, a handful of international names. It’s not just a showcase, it’s a platform that nudges the entire creative ecosystem forward.

For all the milestones, she doesn’t romanticise the journey. “You don’t always see the growth while it’s happening,” she said softly. “It feels like you’re standing still. But when you look back, you realise you’ve been moving the whole time.”

Her influences are telling. While many local photographers reference fashion heavyweights, Raffealla cites Dorothea Lange, the American documentarian best known for Depression-era portraits. Lange’s images were full of pain disguised as joy. “I love that honesty,” she said. “It’s not my style at all, but it inspires me to go deeper, to make work that has feeling, not just beauty.”
Advice has played its part too, especially from her father. At her first art exhibition at age 14, she received offers to sell her paintings. Her father refused. At the time, she was furious. Years later, she understood. “He told me, once you start chasing money, you might stop chasing art. That lesson has stayed with me. I need money to sustain my team, of course, but I’ve never been money-driven. If I get paid, I’m grateful. If I don’t, I still do the work.”

That balance, between art and commerce, freedom and responsibility, has become the spine of her career. But she’s clear about one thing: she hasn’t “made it.” Not yet, maybe not ever. “The moment you feel like you’ve arrived, you shrink,” she said. “I’d rather stay hungry, keep learning, even assist another photographer abroad if it means I grow.” Ego has no place in her worldview. Curiosity does.

These days, she juggles more than photography. She still designs, styles, and lectures. She works as a creative director for Idea Bloom, shaping events with her visual instincts. Over the years, her work has taken her beyond Sri Lanka, with projects across India and other international markets that proved her vision could travel. And while her celebrity calendar remains a flagship project, she’s already looking ahead to two more international tours - India first, then London. And just recently, she was nominated for Best Costume for Visal Adare at the Derana Film Awards, proving she’s still disrupting new spaces at home even as her global footprint expands.

When I asked how she stays motivated, her answer wasn’t grand. It was practical. Structure. She batches shoots and meetings into clusters, protects her downtime fiercely, and treasures doing absolutely nothing in pyjamas as much as she treasures a set that comes alive under her lens. “Rest is underrated,” she laughed. “People don’t realise how much joy there is in switching off. It’s what keeps you sane.”

Her advice for aspiring photographers is equally grounded. Build a portfolio, she insists, and make it your own. Don’t copy under the guise of inspiration. “It’s fine to be in the race,” she said. “Just don’t be the hamster, running in the same spot. Move. Even if you don’t know where you’re going yet, keep moving.”

That’s disruption at its core, not loud slogans or easy wins, but persistence, reinvention, and the courage to carve your own lane. Sitting across from her, I realised that Raffealla’s story isn’t just about breaking into photography. It’s about rewriting the rules of what an artist in Sri Lanka can be.

From the dyslexic child who was told she wasn’t good at anything, to the woman leading an all-girls team and shaping one of the country’s most recognisable creative projects, her career is proof that disruption doesn’t always look like an explosion. Sometimes, it’s the steady refusal to quit.