I can't believe it's been Two Years!!

I've just realised that last week was the 8th of May!
That means two whole years ago (and one week) I started sharing in this blog.
As I wrote my first blog post, I was a little hesitant about starting another blog, as I'd used other blog formats to share my work and ideas but I'd found them hard to stick with.

Here we are celebrating my blog's two year anniversary, it's an amazing feeling to know that I've finally found a space where I can share my ideas and keep adding to them and developing on them as time goes by.

I started writing in this blog to share my work and my ideas in one place, to show finished pieces of work but also to share pieces of work that I was working on. I also started writing in this blog to help find my audience; to share my work with my audience and to have a conversation with my audience.

I want to thank you all for coming along on this journey. Together we've almost reached 10,000 views! As I write this I still can't believe that's right, I'm checking my stats to see if I've rounded up that number but no, it's really there, as I'm writing this we are just a few views away from 10,000!

Writing in this blog has helped to develop my voice, which is something I've always struggled with, sharing my ideas in a cohesive manner was never a strength but over the years I have improved and in the years a head I aim to improve further.

As this blog post comes to a close, I'm filled with an amazing feeling, this journey that I embarked on two years ago is still going strong, this blog is looking better than ever and I think the best way to end this blog post is to share my hopes and dreams for the next two years.

1.  I hope to keep writing in this blog 

2. I hope to keep training and developing my voice 

3. Finally, I hope to have more of a conversation with my audience. 

I want you to share the blog posts that you relate to or find interesting and I want you to comment on these blog posts to continue our conversation.

 Who knows where we will be in two years time, maybe by then I'll be writing about how we're about to reach 20,000 views!

Until next time.

A Short Run - A Jamil Teja Short

Good Evening

 

I'm writing this blog on Monday evening. I've had a busy day trying to fulfill some of my new years resolutions. As I wrote in my previous blog which you can find Here, when we started the year I wanted to push my creativity in addition to getting more active.

And that's exactly what I am doing.

 

Earlier today I signed up for the Sports Relief 6 mile run in Bournemouth, I'm trying to raise £50 for the cause, which will go towards helping people all over the world.

If you would like to sponsor me for the run you can find my donating page here.
Any donations will be greatly appreciated!

In preparation for the 6 mile run which will be taking place in March, I've decided to start going for morning runs, running down to the beach and back which is approximately just over 3 miles for the return journey. As it is still winter and really cold outside I'm limited to how far I can run but I'm sure once Spring comes along I'm sure I will up to running 6 miles.

As part of my journey towards the 6 mile run I've decided to create some short videos about my morning runs. 

 

Here is my newest video,

Enjoy!

Frank Meets Bournemouth

For those of you living in the UK, you probably know by now that we have met Storm Frank and will continue to meet him over the next few as he continues to cause upset and mayhem. 

This morning, I was woken up to the howling of wind and the spattering of rain on my window, peaking out through the curtains I saw the garden was in a pretty bad shape; we've actually managed to lose a few items due to the heavy winds!

I decided to put together this short video capturing the initial impact of Frank on Bournemouth mostly as story telling exercise for myself. 

Special thanks to My Mum who drove me around!

Here is the video ^ 

Take a look, leave a comment and tell me what you think of it!

Three Years Together

Today is a very special day. Today we are celebrating our three year anniversary!

It is amazing to see how far we have come on our journey together.

It feels like just last week we were getting ready for our first date.

It has been an amazing journey with Shanice by my side. As my Best friend, Girlfriend and Soulmate; made ever sweeter by your presence in my life.

Here is a little something I put together, all of our memories captured on camera have been merged together to create one final image. For those of you who don't know, this is the first picture Shanice and I ever took together all those years ago.

The picture gives me a strange but wonderful feeling, as it is the first picture we ever took together way back when we were just friends, then I've overlapped all of our pictures from the last three years over it so it's looking back on the past but for the people in the picture, those memories are yet to happen! 

What happens when you leave a photographer in a hotel room with a camera?

My Trip to Durdle Door!

I've been wanting to travel down to Durdle Door for a few years now, I had no idea how close it was to home! But when I saw people going to visit, I knew it couldn't be far. So I thought I'd go take a look and see what I could capture.

My first "visit" to Durdle Door didn't go so well, you can read about my experience here.

My Second visit was a great success, you can watch a small video from my experience below.

It is such a beautiful location, there are so many locations and perspectives to create some beautiful images but it's all about timing. I think to create the images I have in my mind I would need to come back at Sunrise, Sunset and during stormy weather, I would also bring my telephoto lens and invest in some Neutral Density filters to elongate my shutter speed and slow it right down.

I am happy with the pictures I've captured but I definitely feel they could be improved if the beach was empty, I feel the lack of people in a landscape brings more beauty to a picture.

Here is one of my favourite images from my trip, I love the composition, and it's a good start towards the finishing point, now I know what I have to do next time!

Anoushka Lakhani - Graduation

Yesterday we had a wonderful surprise visit from my cousins and aunt and uncle, they came up to visit my grandparents who have been a bit under the weather in the past few months so whenever we have a visit from family it always leaves them with a big smile on their faces!

My cousin, Anoushka, recently graduated (with a First Class Honours) and I really wanted to capture some pictures of her graduating but the ceremony was all the way up in Bath, luckily when she came yesterday she brought her graduation gown and dress with her, so obviously I got my camera ready and we went out to shoot some pictures.

We also captured some beautiful family pictures to celebrate both my parents and aunt and uncle's wedding anniversary! We are all very proud of her and wish her all the best in what ever she chooses to do next!  

Here is a sneak peak of what we captured yesterday! 

More pictures coming soon!

Looking back over the last 6 months

I can't believe it's already July! 

It feels like just last week I was celebrating the new year with my girlfriend and my family and looking forward to our first holiday together to Barcelona! 

Really, where has the time gone?

I feel like 2015 has already given us all so many beautiful memories and I want to share some of them with you.

So we kicked off the year in Bournemouth this year, watching Rise of the Planet of the Apes, (incase you haven't seen it - I won't spoil it for you, but seriously it is amazing and a must see film!) Two days later we flew out to Barcelona for a few days, that was a wonderful experience, with so many new beautiful sites and many lessons learnt, like never visit the beach in the middle of winter in shorts and a tshirt! (Lesson learnt!) It also gave us a chance to experience new cultures and push our knowledge further, we had been practicing our spanish for weeks before and finally put it to good use! Unfortunately, since we've retuned we've forgotten most of it... well que sera sera! 

After Barcelona, it was back to Bournemouth for a few days before flying out to Mombasa with my family to visit my grandmother and aunties. Last year I brought my camera almost as if I was scoping for locations; this year I came with the intent to make some beautiful images of my family, the friends I made in this trip and friends I had made previously and of course the beautiful landscapes!

This is one of my favourite pictures that I captured from Mombasa - to read more about my trip to Mombasa you can head over to my previous blogposts http://jamilteja.blogspot.com/2015/03/day-1-we-arrived-in-mombasa.html

After Mombasa, my birthday came around and my amazing girlfriend planned not one but two surprise parties for me! It was truly overwhelming to see many of my friends coming together to celebrate my birthday and these are some memories that will always have a special place in my heart!

With April, came the beginning of Wedding Season and I shot my first wedding as the lead photographer, it was both a scary and exciting experience in which I learned so much, luckily the bride and groom were really relaxed on the day it made my job much much easier while capturing their beautiful day!

Towards the end of April my cousin, her husband and her beautiful daughter and my uncle came to visit us from the States, we had so much fun showing them around Bournemouth and then London, taking them site seeing, showing them some of the beautiful wonders of London like the Eye, Big Ben and all the other touristy things you have to do when you visit London for the first time!

The day after they flew out I had surgery on my left eye (don't worry - I use my right eye to look through the viewfinder!) the surgery was successful but it left with blurry vision so I was unable to edit the mountain of pictures from both the wedding and the family pictures for a few weeks, thank God that I had a speedy recovery and was able to get the pictures for the wedding sorted out quickly and my clients love them!

After delivering the images to my client at the beginning of June, I rushed up to Leicester to photograph a Surprise Birthday Party for an old family friend. I've been up to Leicester now and then, it always feels like my home away from home because of the wonderful three years I spent there for university. It  was really weird to see everyone and how they had all changed. The Birthday party was a complete success and I captured some beautiful moments for the family to always remember.

Literally two days after I returned to Bournemouth I received another inquiry to meet with some clients about their wedding in mid June which didn't give me much time to prepare but I was definitely up for the job! I met with the couple and they were both very friendly and really relaxed (qualities I look for in my clients!) and when their special day came round everything went smoothly and we worked together to create some beautiful pictures!

The bride is from Venezuela and her parents are returning to their home in the next few days, so as a little surprise I've put together a small album filled with pictures of them and their daughter and son-in-law from the big day, (but shhhhhhhhhh you have to keep it a secret!)

And that leads us up to the start of July, as soon as I deliver the pictures to the client I will have to start getting ready for the next few projects I'm working on, I'll be second shooting another wedding in a few weeks which will be an amazing experience and I can't wait to learn more from the lead photographer, doing some more product photography and maybe a little bit of video and hopefully designing some big albums for Luke and Hannah!

I hope the next six months will be as good as the beginning of 2015, I'm off to Wireless festival with my girlfriend at the weekend and I'm really looking forward to it, i think I need it after the hard work I've done over the past months!

Until next time, you can check out my blog at www.JamilTeja.blogspot.co.uk and my facebook page at www.facebook.com/JamilTeja

My 100th Blogpost!

I'm so Happy - this is my 100th blogpost!

I never really thought I would reach this point with this blog and I'm so pleased with myself for sticking with it!
Okay firstly, I want to say a big thank you to all my readers and all of you who have shown an interest in my work! It has been a long journey since I started this blog; it really does feel like I started it yesterday; I can literally picture myself writing my first blogpost all those months ago, (okay noted it wasn't the longest blogpost in the world.) I feel very proud of myself, looking at where I started from to the point I've reached in these 100 individual blogposts.

I've learned so much from starting up this blog and of course I have so much more to learn, but I really do feel that it is the beginning of something beautiful and I am so excited to continue this journey with all of you!

Here is to another 100 posts!


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New Parcel!

A parcel just arrived for me! Could it be an early birthday present? Who knows!

I will have to wait and see what it will be!

(another plus - the box is recyclable!)

Some other great news, this is my 99th blogpost! I cant believe that I've been blogging continuously since May last year!! I'm really proud of my self because keeping up this blog has been a struggle but all this hard work has paid of! 

I'm sure my 100th blogpost will be posted sometime soon, so keep a look out for it!

In the mean time, you can always check out my previously 99 blog posts, starting with Number 1!

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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!!

What an adventure...

What an adventure we've had this evening, little did we know when heading to the beach to watch the fireworks what was in store for us. As soon as the fireworks started we saw the tiniest dog run in the opposite direction, thinking "oh its just going to its owners," but after the fireworks finished we heard the owners looking for the dog, so we went to help, as we crossed the road, we saw the dog and called out for it, to our horror the dog started to cross the road and a car came hurtling down the hill and there was a thud, we all looked away but miraculously the dog got up and started running!
For an hour we were calling out for it and nothing, we were all ready to give up, but we mustered up the energy for one more quick look, we started walk down the river, and we heard a rustling, then all of a sudden the dog, came out of the darkness!
What an amazing feeling to see the dog and its owner reunited!! Miracle!!