For My Girlfriend

As you know, since around the last quarter of 2014 I've collaborating with a few different businesses and photographing their products for their websites/marketing material. 

After finishing up for the year, I decided experiment with some pictures of a present I bought for my girlfriend.

I played around for about 45 minutes with different lighting set ups and finally produced this image.

I used the Canon 60mm Macro at f2.8, with a flashgun with a shoot-through-umbrella to the right of the camera. 

The thing I'm most pleased with in this image is the bokeh (the out of focus circular shapes) and the extremely shallow depth of field in addition to the sharpness and the lack of shadow on the black material.

I'll be uploading some more of my work from the previous weeks so stay tuned for more!!

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They say never work with children of animals...

Well over the last 2 weeks I've done both!

Let me give you a little backstory, I've been working with a Bournemouth based business - Beauxoxo, they produce and sell hair accessories and distribute all over the world, and last week Beauxoxo and el-Rhey another Bournemouth business collaborated together for a fashion cat walk at the Parkstone Yacht Club. 

el-Rhey were looking for a photographer for the fashion show and then some follow up photoshoots shoots to promote their Colour Me Wellies and their new colour changing umbrellas which will be released early next year!

The fashion catwalk was a great event, the kids pranced up and down the catwalk showing off their wonderful colourful wellies and their unbelievable colour changing umbrellas.

Long story short, el-Rhey loved the pictures and we began working together on two further projects, one was a fashion photoshoot and the other a photoshoot featuring the boots and the cutest little 5 week old kitten.

Here are a few pictures from the photoshoot with the kitten!

This is Jessie, she is a 5 week old black and white kitten, sadly she was orphaned weeks ago but luckily she was brought in to the Margaret Green Animal Sanctuary in Wareham.

The girls at Margaret Green were very accommodating and helpful which made our job very easy.

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Merry Christmas!!

Well my blog is almost 8 months old, and I've racked up an impressive number of posts, I'm really proud of myself, I wouldn't have been able to reach that number without the support of you, my followers, so here's wishing you all a very Merry Christmas!!

Picture from a recent photoshoot with el-Rhey!!

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All packed and ready to shoot

I've just finished packing my bags, I'm ready for my shoot tomorrow with El Rhey, we're looking to go to Moors Valley and capture some pictures for their Christmas promotions.

I'm taking gear which I know will be best for shooting portraits

Hopefully the weather holds out and we capture some great shots!!

and in a few days I'll be doing another shoot with them, photographing a cute little 5 week old black and white kitten! I'm really excited to see what we produce! 

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New Lenses!

I brought home my contact lenses yesterday, managed to lose one behind the radiator, then find it 2 hours later, 
now I've put them in it's like I'm seeing in RAW, my eyesight has gone from f1.8 to f22 and the Clarity has been bumped up to +100!!

I think it's time to bring out my macro lens for a bit of fun!

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Follow Up on the Rogue Flashbender + Diffusion Panel

Yesterday I sat down to write up a follow up blog post about using the Rogue Flashbender with the diffusion panel; I have been using them together over the past few weeks now but mainly last weekend when the whole family ventured to London for the day so I was mainly photographing some formal family portraits as my uncle is visiting us from the States.

We met up with a few family friends and relatives, so there was plenty of opportunities to set up the flashbender and test it out. I tried it a few times in different locations on the camera on the flash, and I have to say I LOVE THE CATCHLIGHTS in the eyes, they are so big and bright and really bring the viewer's attention to the eyes.

However, I was not pleased with the light spread of the flashbender and diffusion panel, I found it to be a little bit dim and a little bit flat, I'm so used to shooting on camera flash with the Stofen diffusers, that this is going to take some time to get used to.

Then today (I'm writing this on Tuesday,) I was helping out my sister with her photoshoot and I took some headshots of the model, my friend Immy with my 85mm lens, I set up the flashbender and diffusion panel off camera to the right of my model, and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised with the results, with the light being more directional and with the flashbender and diffusion panel acting as a softbox it was easier to direct the light where I wanted it and the fall off from the flash was pleasant and visually pleasing.

I'd love to hear some feedback about my blog, please comment and if you've found this useful please share it with your friends!

and before I forget, you can check out My Sister's blog - Here!

Two Years Together

This is more of a personal post, just over two years ago, at the beginning of my third year of university, something amazing happened, I met a wonderful human being, little did I know, that encounter was the beginning of something beautiful.

We became good friends within days and great friends over the following weeks, then one day something changed, sparks flew, fireworks banged and I know it sounds corny but there really was magic in the air.

The Night of Our First Date

Two Years later...



Shanice and I celebrated our Two Year Anniversary on Friday, she came down to see me and we spent the last few days together, over the weekend we enjoyed each others company, took the dogs for long walks, and exchanged I Love You's.

The Night of Our Two Year Anniversary

This is just a little insight into me aside from being a photographer, I hope you have found this interesting, please leave me some feedback either on my blog or on Facebook or Twitter @JamilTeja

Stay Tuned for New Updates, Pictures and Videos!!

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Til' Next Time,

See Ya Later!!

Jamil's First Impressions on the Rogue Flashbender

Look what arrived in the post today!!

I've been debating whether or not to invest in the Rogue Flashbender for a few months now, but two days ago I invested in a new Flash Stand, (the review for that will be posted soon) and I thought I'd look into purchasing the flashbender and diffusion panel.

This is my video expressing my initial thoughts on the flashbender and diffusion panel.

  

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A Quick Pic

This is a quick picture of Amy and I from our recent photoshoot together!

Part 1 of the shoot was inside, we just experimented with a few ideas but we were in a cramped space so they didn't work out as well as I'd hoped, but for the second half we ventured outside and got some great shots!

I'll be sharing those with you shortly!

remember you can catch up on Facebook

5 Months!!

Today marks the 5 month anniversary of My Blog!!


In the past I have had a couple of different blogs, but I haven't really found them to be very useful, however with this blog, I've been inspired to update it at least once a week, and the feedback I am receiving from the blog has been highly beneficial to me in seeing what people like to see from my blog, what really works with the blog and what doesn't work with the blog.


Within the last 5 months, I've successfully updated atleast once a week, racking up a total of 3552 views on my blog, 65 blog posts and 6 comments.

Hopes for the next 5 months:

I'd like to reach 5 digits in views, that would be an amazing accomplishment,
also to reach 100 blog posts and to keep going strong with the blog and finally, I'd like for more interactions with my audience using the blog, that way we can both work towards the blog becoming more helpful for my audience.

anyways, to all reading, thank you for sticking with me for the last 5 months and I hope you've found reading my blog interesting,

please leave some feedback in the comment section!!


cya l8r!

Spiders' Webs!!

I guess I've always had an interest in Nature, going camping in the Summer, riding bikes or just exploring the wilderness, this year has been no exception, but I've been taking my camera out more often.

Over the last few years I've always tried taking pictures of spiders' webs but to no success, now I realise how my technique was wrong, I was trying to shoot the spiders' web and get a black background, instead I now realise that it is very important to include the background in the images!

Here are a few examples of the images I've captured recently1

Shot with 60mm f2.8 Macro

Shot with 60mm F2.8 Macro

Shot at 60mm f2.8 Macro

Shot with 70-200mm f4

Mum's Orchid

Last week my Dad bought some orchids for my Mum, they look lovely so I thought I'd bring them into the studio and take a few pictures and see what I got,

I set up my lights, using a 3 light set up and took a few images, then thought about putting in a fourth light on the background to add some dimension to the orchid.

 Here is the flower with the 3 light set up.

and here it is with the four light set up.

Which picture do you prefer?

Comment below!

Portrait of Scrappy

This is my second image from the project, looking at the life of my dogs.

Scrappy has always been a little bit bigger than Scruffy and is a bit more stubborn but his Achilles Heel has always been food!

Getting him to pose was one of the most difficult things I've ever had to do on a portrait session because he just would not listen!

The only way I could direct him was to bribe him with food!

Anyway, I fired of a few frames, found I was a little overexposed and then refined my settings and captured this.

Captured with Canon 7D with 70-200mm f4 

at 1/100 f5.6 ISO 100

 I'm really happy with this image, it really captures Scrappy's personality, you can't see it in the frame but I'm actually holding a little treat for him to catch his attention.

Stay tuned for more pictures!!

It's 2 o'clock in the morning...

It's 2 o'clock in the morning and I'm just getting everything prepared for tomorrow, I'm going to be working with Georgie from Beauxoxo, we met a few weeks ago and discussed ideas for tomorrows product shoot, we're going to try taking pictures with a 3/4 light set up of the various hair accessories Georgie produces.

I'm really excited as the client is really nice and friendly, which always helps, and I'm going to hopefully try a few different lighting set ups, see what works, what doesn't work and hopefully we will produce a great series of images!

It's also exciting to be trying new things, I've dabbled with product photography in the past,
My First Attempt at Product Photography, but I've never photographed hair accessories so it should be very interesting to see how the results turn out!


I'm gonna try and get some sleep now!

Wish Me Luck!!

Portrait of Scruffy

I've been wanting to try to take some portraits of my dogs, We've had them for over 10 years now and I haven't taken pictures of them properly, so I decided by the end of the year I'm going to produce a series of images capturing their lifestyle, their habits, in an attempt to depict their personality through the images.

This is the first picture from that body of work, it was a real struggle getting him to look into my lens, I had a box of treats at hand in an attempt to draw his interest back to the camera. However I found the pictures of him looking off into the distance work far better than the ones of him looking into the lens.

I shot the picture in colour and really liked it that way, then I looked at the tones and the lighting and thought it would look pretty good in black and white.

I'm not a big fan of turning colour photos black and white, simply because we see in colour and a lot of my work depicts the mood and the atmosphere my subject, however the lighting on Scruffy interested me and made me curious as to how it would look in black and white.

I'd be interested to know what you think, Do you like the lighting?

Does it work in black and white?

To see the colour version head over to My 500px Portfolio

Need a photographer for your up coming event?

The Bournemouth Air Show 2014

I've lived in Bournemouth for almost 20 years now and every time I see the red arrows (it must be twice a year atleast) I still get that tingly feeling, it must be such an amazing experience being a pilot for the red arrows, the sights they must see but you never think about all the training that goes into it, all the hard work that draws the crowds back, year after year to see these magnificent planes perform death defying stunts is something very special to all of us in Bournemouth.

Apart from seeing the Red Arrows, I'd never really paid much attention to the Bournemouth Air Show, however this year is different, I guess over the last few years I've always wanted to go and take pictures of the Red Arrows but something has always come up, well this year I finally did it!

Here are some of the pictures I captured of the weekend!

My 5 Tips For Taking Better Pictures at Events

I was at my friend, Tom's Birthday party at the weekend and everyone was taking pictures, I was reminiscing on the times I had photographed his birthday parties and remember all the tips and tricks I've learned from photographing events, so I decided to produce a small video giving you my 5 tips for taking better pictures at events!

If this has been useful for you please don't forget to Like, Comment and Subscribe to My Channel!

and if there are any videos you think I should produce, please let me know in the comments!

A Big Thank You

Manfrotto ML240 Mini LED Unboxing and First Impressions

I've been looking at my videos, especially the lighting in them and they seem to be quite dark. 

I make the effort to film during the day and use a reflector so can get the best lighting possible, however it can still be quite dark, so I decided to invest in a small light - the Manfrotto ML240 Mini LED. 

If this has been helpful for you, don't forget to Like, Comment and Subscribe!

You can also follow me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/JamilTeja