I have to keep reminding myself each and everyday how lucky I am to meet the people I meet each day. Working as a reporter has awesome perks, and I love interacting with people who are passionate about what they do each and everyday. I love the fact that I get to do stories about positive things and share people's experiences and I'd love to share some of those with you :)

Last month I had the pleasure of chatting with a lovely lady who was selected to be the 365 Days of Dinning in Richmond food blogger for a whole year, awesome job in itself if you ask me. She was pretty fun to hang out with and we got to go to two different places in Steveston to do the shoot. Thanks so much to all the people from Tourism Richmond who made this shoot so wonderful.

In the next story I feature an awesome company that has taken social media, marketing and movies mixed them all up and came up with a new and innovative way to get a film funded and to get the public involved in the film making process . The company is called Cinecoup and they are still in the process of picking the top movie which will get 1 million dollars in funding and support from Cineplex.

Finally I was so delighted to interview a good friend of mine who is definitely going places with her youtube channel. Maija Preddy's MKP Celebrity Talk youtube channel has about 116,000 views in total. She started the channel herself and she gets to travel with her mom (who is her camera person as well) to different places interviewing various celebrities. She does it on her own time and it's all thanks to the mentra of 'It doesn't hurt to ask'.

These are only 3 stories but I'll share some more in the next few days so stay tuned! ;)

Dunia

I know I know, I've been out for, well, a year and a half, and lots has happened since then.. The biggest and most profound change is that now I am a mom and I have a beautiful little baby :) Yes, it's amazing, wonderful, rewarding, hard, sleep-lacking.. how many more adjectives I can think of can't really capture the essence of it all but all in all I am really happy :) 

Another big change that happened during that time is that I moved back to Vancouver and now I'm Vj'ing with Shaw TV's 'Go! Vancouver' , something I've been wanting to do for a long time and I'm happy I get to do so, so yes, I am back in business.

I'm going to try to write often and commit to doing that. I'll feature some of the stuff I'm working on, VJ'ing tips, interesting journalism/video related articles and sometimes some random stuff.

I'll start by talking about one of the shoots I did this week. Seeing how I'm baby crazy these days, I had a great time shooting a story with Langley baby photographer Jillian Kirby. Babies are some of the hardest subjects to photograph because they're so unpredictable, but they can also give some of your best work at the same time. Jillian has been working with babies for the past 5-6 years and she sure knows how to bring out the best in them. 

In terms of VJ'ing, shooting this kind of story can be both hard and easy at the same time. For visuals, you've got lots to work with. Different props, different babies, lost of possible angles. In terms of writing for a feature like that it's a bit more challenging than writing a news story. In features you have to capture the essence of the person you're profiling and dig deeper to find out more about why they do what they do and why do they love what they're doing. I have to say that it's no easy task for me and I still have lots to learn and I guess it comes more with practice :)

The story will air on January 25th on Shaw TV channel 4 and here is a little preview for you.