Hello Everyone,

April 2nd marked my meeting and breaching of the 5K threshold. I would really like to thank all of my watchers, especially the recent ones. Very much has happened for me photographically since my last journal. A series of serendipitous events have landed me a photographer position and a place in an advanced photography class at my university. I realize that this is a long post, and I hope you read it in its entirety, not because I like to be long-winded, but merely because the last two months have been an astronomically important period in my life—especially relating to photography.

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Last quarter, I met a phenomenal man, Bug Jerome, of Murder Mountain Records. He got me interested in local music and the photography of that scene. Subsequently, I've shot for many great groups, getting some images published. The acts include: Yogoman Burning Band [link] , Karate Kitchen [link] , So Many Dynamos [link] , The Growers [link] , Mount Eerie / The Microphones [link] , and the Bug himself [link] . Working with Bug has got my work published in West Coast Performer [link] and What's Up? Magazine [link] which is pretty rad.

Also during the course of last quarter, I made two video projects using still frames. The first of these describes my philosophies and approach towards life. The second is merely eye and ear candy. In both I used music from Revolution Void, a Creative Commons artist out of Seattle who has amazing work that is all free to download: [link] . I encourage you to view these two short videos, they took a very long time to make, each project involved roughly 600 frames that I shot, edited and sequenced. Here they are: [link] + [link]

Hope you enjoy them.

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A good friend of my recently joined DeviantArt. Her work is simply amazing and very inspired. I encourage you all to view her gallery and give her feedback


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Spring break was an interesting experience. I couch-surfed in Seattle for a week and a half, living as frugally as possible, paying my way with loads of dishes and the generosity of other people. I managed to spend under 55 dollars for the whole trip (most of this was food), which I'm proud of. I owe my hosts many thanks.

The Seattle Aquarium was a pretty amazing experience and I took some pretty interesting pictures there. I find the underwater world to be so much more vivid that the one that we occupy. I'll post some fish pictures as I get caught up. I also have some other perspectives on Seattle that I will post in the near future.

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This quarter I managed to squeeze my way into an upper level photography class despite having next to no affiliation with my university's art department, nor having taken the pre-reqs to the class. The class is an integrated film-digital class, so I'll be purchasing a manual camera this weekend. I really like the old Nikon Nikkormat bodies, and I want to see if I can lay my paws on one of those. I've been reading up on darkroom techniques and intend on scanning and posting film images in the near future.

One of our assignments is to shoot 70 self portraits (one for each day of the quarter). My recent piece “Week 1” is my first self portrait in about a year, prepare to be seeing more.

On the topic of self-image: I'm cutting my hair. I'm tired of looking like I'm 25—I'm not. Plus, hair is such a burden that I would love to be rid of (at least partially—full baldness is still a ways off).

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I've landed a job as a photographer at a student publication called Klipsun Magazine. The publication is pretty good and the pay is reasonable, I think I will enjoy it. [link]

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I've completed my final training to become a music DJ for my university's college radio, which is one of the only fully student-run radio stations left in the country. If anyone is interested in hearing me on-air, my show is webcasted at [link] 2-4AM on Friday mornings PST (-7 hours from Greenwich Mean Time). Feel free to tune in, I have eclectic tastes, but focus on good electronica and underground hip hop.

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I seem to have lined up employment for this summer as a board operator for Northwest Public Radio. The job should be interesting and get me some very real world experience with automation, sound editing, and radio as a whole. NWPR webcasts at [link] , listen for me this summer

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Thanks for reading that giant monologue. I really appreciate the support.

~JEmtman



P.S. To the people I watch: I really apologize for my lack of support. I've got a growing pile of 550+ deviations that I haven't had time to look through yet. But don't worry, I will look at and comment on them.