Meet Regina Smiley | Director, Producer & Cinematographer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Regina Smiley and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Regina, we’d love to hear about how you approach risk and risk-taking
The more risks you’re willing to take, the more chances you will have at success. I’m a firm believer in risk taking because the best outcomes tend to happen outside of your comfort zone where you know exactly what’s going to happen. I’ve never witnessed anyone win by playing it safe and some of my most fulfilling moments in my career happened because I decided not to take the safe predictable route to the finish line.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Lipstickroyalty Images was created as a platform to help tell the stories of The Lipstickroyalty Agency and our clients. Both my partner Shawn and I had past experience in photography and knew that we would have to show our audience and not just tell them how our agency helped local Tallahassee talent and small business owners to tell their stories. Today, we’ve evolved many of those same tactics into solutions for businesses, artists, government entities and creatives in South Florida.

Now Lipstickroyalty Images is a production company that utilizes the power visual storytelling, to help save time, build and nurture relationships, and allow people to control their own narratives. I’m most proud of the fact that we are building a platform that will eventually allow millions to broadcast their own stories to the world as they want to be seen.

I got to where I am in business by getting more comfortable with taking risks honestly. I moved from Ohio to Florida very young and that decision was followed by several other decisions that a sane person would call crazy. I wouldn’t call the road to get here easy because I was always prospected to be an athlete. Facing the world as anything other than an athlete was one of my greatest challenges to date. Athletics was a security blanket and the center of my comfort zone, but a career ending injury caused me to have to take a deeper look into who I was and my purpose in life. The only other skill that I had and loved was writing stories. I worked odd jobs until one day Shawn and I were able to get our foot in the door with the resident photographer at King of Diamonds in Miami. He allowed us to sell printed photos to club guests for extra money. That experience put us in direct contact with a lot of people in the entertainment industry and introduced me a new way of storytelling. I took what we learned from that experience to position myself as the photographer at few local Tallahassee parties and everything evolved from there.

Along the way I’ve learned to never despise small beginnings. You have to start somewhere in everything that you do, no matter how small, so take time to appreciate every step of the way. Whenever you reach a new peak there will be new challenges that you’ve never experienced, but don’t afraid of them. Embrace and learn from them and trust in God throughout the process.

I want the world to know that I am here to help. My brand was birthed from the desire to help others hold on to their memories and be that visual support for them when they tell their stories.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I’m a simple girl and many of my plans revolve around eating so let’s start there lol. My top 5 places that we would have to go to eat and have drinks are (in no particular order) Little Green House Grill and House of Wings in Overtown, Bacon Bitch at Bayside, Latin Cafe in Brickell and R House in Wynwood. The drinks at R House have never let me down.

A day on the water has become one of my favorite pass times over the years so I like to either go to the beach or charter a yacht for the day. We would also visit Aventura Mall, Dolphin Mall & Brickell City Center to shop, play games at Dave & Busters and the CMX dine-in movie theater. Lastly, we would have to visit Schnebly Winery for one of the best wine tasting experiences in Florida.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Shout out to my Lipstickroyalty family and my beautiful fiance Shawn Nelson for always trusting me to lead and execute the visual production for any and everything that we create. Stay loyal, live royal.

Website: www.Lipstickroyaltyimages.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lipstickroyaltyimages/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/regina-smiley-b19798158/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Lipstickroyaltyimages

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyNNp1Y-toqnByVa6KLlzKw