A B O U T T H E A R T I S T

CHRISTIAN JAEMES

Hi, I’m Christian.

I’m a 23 year-old photographer & videographer from the heart of Yorkshire.

With over 10 years worth of experience, I’ve narrowed down and honed my skills as a self-taught photographer, videographer & creative, and pushed my boundaries as a landscape photographer—synonymous with capturing quaint village landscapes, panoramic views of the English countryside, and peaceful sunrises.

Its very rare you see me without some kind of camera in my hand.

In the beginning…

There he is. A 14 year-old, carefree Christian Jaemes. He hasn’t got a clue whats in store for him.

Ever since I was a child, I’ve had an urge to create. I always had a passion for drawing and art, so the creativity was there from the start.

When I was around 8 years-old I experimented with things such as Lego stop-motion animation on my Sony Walkman, to making YouTube videos when I was 12. , so I knew somewhere down the line, I’d be a creative person.

1999-2012

Born and raised right in the heart of Yorkshire, God’s Own Country.

Due to that, I’ve always been around stunning and extensive landscapes - however, I feel this was a great hindrance in my journey to discovering landscape photography. I’ll explain why further into the journey…

My catalogue of work can be traced back to when I was as young as 8 years old, using a 3-megapixel Lego camera that I got for Christmas, and a Sony Walkman slide phone to capture stop-motion films (which I would play back by quickly flicking through the images).

This then advanced into making my own YouTube gaming videos from 2011, using an iPad 2 camera to record my TV gameplay and everything I could possibly get my hands on in my bedroom to put together a makeshift tripod - game cases, books, boxes, ornaments, anything that could hold the camera high enough. It wasn’t just gaming videos though, there was scripted sketch style videos, short action films, anything just to be creative.

As much as I didn’t realise it back then, a camera would become integral to me as a person.

I kept dabbling with stop-motion, drawing, YouTube and general creative things a child can do. It wasn’t until 2013 that my life finally grasped onto photography - as a hobby, but it wasn’t on purpose…

2013-2014

2013 was the first year in my life when I’d ever picked up and used a DSLR.

I’d stumbled across photography by accident, when I was faced with a choice at school for my GCSE subjects.

I had experience taking photos and making videos, but not to a high level. I had no prior knowledge, passion, or understanding of the subject of photography, other than “photos that had a blurry background were photography photos”.

I thought photography would be a good option, purely based on the fact I used to mess around on Photoshop (mostly with the liquify tool), but I figured “I can have fun messing around on Photoshop all lesson, let’s take photography!”.

GCSE photography taught me the basics of how to use a DSLR, however, I was still finding my subject. Often, it was a case of taking images like the one behind this text (this one was taken from my Year 10 GCSE project). My teacher at the time couldn’t have been more supportive.

I wasn’t aware that upon my first lesson in photography, I would fall in love with it and find a lifelong passion.

MY FIRST TIME USING A DSLR

27 September, 2013

This is one of the first images I had ever taken on a DSLR. This was the first day in my life that I’d ever used one.

Shot on a Canon 1100d and a macro lens.

Luckily, my friends were open to the idea of photography and didn’t get bored of me talking about it.

We’d spend evenings in the skatepark taking photos on our old phones, seeing who could get the best photo of the sunset, or who could get the best video shot, all in between skateboarding around and shooting each other trying to do skate tricks.

They were good photos and good memories, but they weren’t ‘technically’ good.

I had an idea for editing and composition, but I was still learning the technical skill behind taking an image, so these nights of ‘practice’ were just for fun - but essential to my growth in photography.

Back then, Instagram played a huge part in the photography scene. It was the social media platform primarily for photos. It was a photo app.

You couldn’t make a post on there without sharing an image, so naturally, photographers flocked to Instagram as their app of choice - including me and my friends.

We posted photos of skateboards, sunsets, tried to get aesthetic photos, and coffee shop coffee.

I then acquired my first DSLR of my own.

Admittedly, it was the same model as what my school had in stock, but that was only because - that’s the only DSLR I knew.

So, there it was, my very own Canon 1100d.

2015

These next couple of years were crucial for my descent deep into photography, the solidification that was “this is what I want to do. Forever.”

In 2015, I took a 10-day trip to Hong Kong. The furthest I’d ever been from home.

It was a 13-hour flight, and my school actually allowed me time off for this “once-in-a-lifetime trip” - as they called it.

Armed and ready with my Canon 1100d, I packed my kit lens and took to the sky.

Upon seeing the landscape of Hong Kong, my eyes were opened. I couldn’t stop taking photos.

The buildings, the food, the people, the landscape - everything was so new to me that I wanted to capture and remember everything…

So I did.

The bright lights, the water, everything looked perfect to me and I ‘needed’ to get some ‘nice’ photos of it all - this was when I realised that the itch for taking photos will always be with me.

This was the first proper trip where I’d made a plan of what I wanted to capture, and things I wanted to shoot, and I was genuinely scared that 10 days wouldn’t be enough time. The thought of that made me anxious.

It turns out, 10 days wasn’t enough time.

But, I had a huge bank of content for me to riffle through when I got back to England, and that’s where I truly discovered the power of editing & post-production in photography.

2015-2017

Between these years, I was in my final years of school (known as Sixth Form in the UK).

In these years, you pick 3 subjects of you’re choice to study at A-Level, and A-Levels are needed to get into university. At the time, I had my eyes set on going to university.

It was also around this time where I took on my first ever client shoot - Industry Barbers in Haworth. An actual commissioned shoot. I felt like I’d “made it”. They trusted me and I had no prior knowledge in the freelance world. I’ll always be grateful for that.

Technically, I didn’t learn much more about taking photos and using a camera in Sixth Form, it was more about honing what I already knew. But this is when I first discovered Adobe Lightroom - a photo editing software used by photographers.

In school, we were taught to edit photos using Photoshop. In my opinion, Photoshop is for photo manipulation, and Lightroom is for photo enhancement (Photoshop is still good for enhancement, Lightroom just has that extra edge).

Lightroom has so much more capability, and for me, it was like walking into the biggest toy shop I’d ever been in in my life. I was in my element. I sat for hours just playing with each slider, seeing what changed what, which colour is which, working my way around the program until I was confident in knowing how to use it.

With my new catalogue of images from Hong Kong, I couldn’t have found Lightroom at a better time - it truly changed the way I look at photos and the whole post-production process.

A fire started to light in my head.

I did all of this while still dabbling in the odd client shoot. My confidence was still building at this point, but I still put myself out there.

After getting my head down and putting in the hours on my laptop, I passed my A-Levels and made my way onto university.

I was ecstatic, this is what I’d been working for, I’d always wanted to go to university…

But it wasn’t quite what I expected…

Since I was young, I had always dreamt of going to university.

Living that ‘student life’, moving away from home, attending lectures and seminars, making friends that I meet up with on campus before going out to shoot - I’d thought about it all and I was dead set on going.

I loved my time at university. I met some incredible people and friends for life, and it routed some core values in me.

I also used photography to help me get by at university. I’d do free photoshoots for things such as free haircuts, free food, free tattoos - this massively helped my confidence for client shoots and working with people/businesses.

Sadly, however, university didn’t turn out like I’d expected it to.

The course just wasn’t for me.

I wanted to get hands-on and take photos. However, the course felt like it was 90% theory, and 10% practical.

After 2 academic years of living away from home, and after a couple of weeks of contemplating, I made the decision to dropout.

Yes, I’m a dropout.

I wasn’t enjoying myself on that course and I wanted to see what I was capable of on my own - if I could make it in photography without having the degree.

So, in the middle of 2018, I packed up my house in the city and made my way back to the countryside.

I’d missed the rolling hills, anyway.

I’ll be forever grateful for my time at university, the experiences I had, and the people I met, but it was time to go freelance…

2017-2018

MY BRIEF UNIVERSITY JOURNEY

2019

With a fresh outlook, and having been away from the countryside for 2 years, it was time to get thinking about how I was going to get my start ‘professionally’.

I didn’t really explore Landscape Photography until around 2018.

There was a slight shift in my focus.

I loved ‘creating’ beauty in my shots, which for me usually meant shooting a model in a studio or with an outdoor backdrop.

However, the older I got, the more I realised that - rather than creating beauty, there is so much beauty around me already to be captured, all of the time. 24/7.

I feel this was because I’ve always been around beautiful landscapes, due to where I’m from, that I didn’t appreciate them for what they are - because I was used to them.

That’s where I discovered my passion for slowing down, taking in what I see, finding a composition within the landscape - the beauty that is already on show, and shifting my focus to Landscape Photography.

2019-2020

This period was my time of recuperation & experimentation.

It was just after moving back home, so I spent some time getting my bearings and figuring things out.

I was back in the countryside, and that meant I could finally spend my time finally taking some landscape photos.

I’d been itching to get some landscape shots while I was in the city - but obviously that wasn’t to feasible. Once I was back up north, I took advantage of the countryside and took trips to local nature reserves and The Lake District. My long exposure landscape itch was finally getting scratched.

But, because I wasn’t at university anymore, that meant I had to get myself a job.

I worked behind a bar as a barman - this was a tactical decision.

I was quite a shy person as a teenager. You’d never really see me speaking my mind and I’d always be conscious of myself, just holding myself back altogether.

So, I decided working behind a bar would be a good idea to bring me out of my shell, to try and make me and force me to be more confident - and thankfully, it worked.

I worked the New Years Eve shift behind the bar in 2019, and I loved it - I made the decision right there and then that next year, 2020, would be my year. My year for freelance, my year for photography, my time.

Then 2020 actually came around…

L O C K D O W N | 2020

So, yeah…

2020 came around, and 2 days before my 21st Birthday, we got put into lockdown…

2020 was going to be my year of growth, putting the work in and becoming the photographer I’d always wanted to be, but, as I imagine for everyone, those plans got put on hold... For a year.

Being a photographer, a landscape photographer nonetheless, and not being to leave the house - they don’t really work well together.

Itching to do something, I focused my attention and energy towards growing my photography social media platforms.

Using photos I had already taken, photos that I would take on my daily walk allowance, and making YouTube videos during lockdown.

This was a lifesaver for me. It gave me a focus, something to work on and something to do - in a time where, quite literally, there was nothing to do.

During the times I was able to leave the house, I snapped as many photos as I could. In doing so, this allowed me to compile them together to make my very own calendar. This was the time of year I released my first ever proper photography product on my website:

The Christian Jaemes Brontë Country 2021 Calendar.

This is a monumental moment in the CJ journey into photography.

They sold out completely and sold worldwide - absolutely mind blowing.

This gave me the realisation that - its happening. My dream of being a freelance photographer with my own range of products was slowly starting to become reality… I just had to keep going, we weren’t there yet.

L O C K D O W N | 2021

2021 was a more manageable with its lockdowns and social distancing precautions, but it was still a nightmare.

Although, this meant an increase in trips out to take photos to share, and also an increase in client work.

With the efforts I put in during lockdown, my social media platforms were slowly starting to gain some traction.

The more I posted and work on the platform, the more my followers would increase. It was very surreal that people actually enjoyed my work.

It felt like the pieces were slowly coming together.

The more my platforms grew, the more I wanted to work. A very productive cycle started to begin.

I kept posting on social media consistently to the point where my followers were asking to buy my work and businesses around Yorkshire were asking for my photography services.

(I had tried to sell prints ever since I started shooting with a DSLR, and I must have sent out about 10,000 cold emails asking for work - to which I got about 5 replies, but the prints never worked. Ever. So hearing responses like these added so much fuel to the fire that was already burning).

Fast forward to Q4 2021, and due to popular demand, I released my Brontë Country 2022 Calendar - which doubled in sales in comparison to the prior year.

2022-NOW

2022 was by far the best year for my freelance photography journey.

From the offset, I had client shoots coming in monthly, and my Facebook following grew from 1,400 followers to 17,800 - which meant more sales, more bookings, and more recognition - things were finally working.

During the summer of 2022, I had the opportunity to open my very own physical shop for my photography. I had prints dotted around on the walls and on display tables, keyring’s on stands for people to look through, and I took cash AND card - made me feel like I knew what I was doing.

I started to get recognised more and more in public for my work, so much so that I got scouted by Channel 4 to be on the classic show ‘Changing Rooms’ hosted by Laurence Llewelyn Bowen and Whinnie Williams - the producers had found me through my landscape photography and wanted me to be on the show. Crazy.

The client work I was doing started to get bigger and bigger in 2022 also. From 1-hour portrait sessions to 2-day photo & video shoots with my very own production team wearing my own branded clothing - it was a surreal feeling.

2022 was a massive turning point in my career. My Bronte Country 2023 sold out 5 times and I had to keep on restocking, along with prints, magnets, keyring’s, Christmas cards - its completely and utterly mind-blowing.

So now we start a New Year, riding on the high of 2022 and feeling more motivated than ever.

THANK YOU FOR ALL YOUR SUPPORT

If you like my work and my content and decide to stick around for the journey, it’s much appreciated. Also, if you decide you would like me to capture your vision, I will make sure that the work I produce is of the highest quality I can offer, with frequent communication to make sure we get exactly what you have in mind.

Please get in touch via the contact page, or drop me an email if that’s the case - I’m happy to talk about ideas. Thank you for visiting my website, thank you for your support and have a lovely day.