about — ameena's creative studio

Hello! I’m Ameena.

I’m a photographer and writer who loves to tell stories about adventure, the outdoors, and our relationship with the natural world.

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I’m based in Croydon, the most southern point of London. I’ve lived here mostly all my life but my mind is often in the mountains. I still love my hometown and last year, my photobook and visual love letter Crocus Valley was published.

My family are from opposite ends of the earth – Mauritius and Spain – and I was born and raised in south London. My mixed heritage has had and continues to have a profound impact on my creative practice as well as my personal life.

In my 20s, I developed a love of adventuring and the outdoors. I’ve made work on martial arts, long-distance walking, mountaineering, solo adventuring, and more. Community and culture are at the heart of the stories I love to tell.

I’m turning into a bit of a nature girlie; in 2024, I’m getting more into fungi, lichen, local conservation, soft hiking, the seasons, and other good earthy things.

Though it took me some years (and a pandemic!) to realise it, I’ve always been some form of writer/artist combination.

I learned my trade at the Univeristy of the West of England (Bristol) where I completed a degree in photography, then it was a trial by fire as I dove head-first into the creative industry soon after graduating.

I worked in the industry for several years, starting out in marketing for a fine-art print lab and ending up in a senior role in creative production at a visual agency.

I went freelance as a photographer in late 2019... you might be able to see where this is going. During the first months of the pandemic, I was forced to switch careers to something that I could do from home.

After lots of worrying, working freelance for my exes (ex-companies, thankfully), and a minor meltdown at the end of 2020, in 2021 I began the journey to becoming a professional writer. Since then, I’ve worked on a range of content and copywriting projects and for a mixed bag of clients.

Ameena’s Creative Studio is the next chapter of this ever-evolving journey and I’m incredibly excited to formally bring my two loves together.

Here are some other highlights:

I was the editor of Black River Journal for almost a decade, an online photography platform I founded in 2014 to support photographers who make work around our relationship with the natural world. The journal shut down in 2022 ~ but there may or may not be plans to bring it back. Watch this space.

I’m an internationally published and exhibited photographer. This November, I was shortlisted for British Journal of Photography’s Portrait of Britain Vol 7. I was also recently featured in Australia’s frankie magazine, published in Then There Was Us’ annual AND 2023, and exhibited at the Royal Photography Society’s International Photography Exhibition 163.

My photobook Crocus Valley was published by RRB Photobooks last year and launched as part of Croydon’s London Borough of Culture programme in August 2023. Crocus Valley is “a purposefully unexpected glimpse and romantic view of this cultural and generational patchwork quilt of a place that’s supposedly empty of such romance. Scenes that are rarely, if ever, depicted in the media or spoken about.”

I’m a newsletter addict and have published several pop-up newsletters over the years: Notes on Freelancing was a newsletter about my journey into freelancing; The Silver Way was my travelogue-style newsletter about my 900km+ trek from Sevilla in southern Spain to Galicia along a lesser-known route of the famous Camino de Santiago pilgrimage. I currently publish For the girls who go alone, a newsletter about adventuring solo as a woman.

I have an adventurous side. I’ve trained in Shaolin Kung Fu and Muay Thai in each respective ancestral home. I’ve walked the Camino de Santiago twice, the West Highland Way, and my next project is the incredible Kungsleden. My longest walk was 45 days.

In 2023, I joined the Following Nan Project. Our crew of nine women trekked for 3 days and 4 nights through the infamous Scottish Cairngorms on a particularly gnarly expedition inspired by Nan Shepherd’s cult classic nature book The Living Mountain. Watch the trailer for the film To Know a Mountain documenting the trip (and my mid-hike meltdown).

I'm a brand photographer + copywriter based in Croydon, available to work around London and south east. I help indie creators, founders, and small business owners express their real selves and build meaningful connections.