jeffsmudde - Tumblr blog

[jeffsmudde]

#RealEmoPhotography

Off of Old Falls Road, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, 2013

When you ask me what kind of photographer I am, I will either say concert or landscape. It often depends on the context.

My passion lies in both music and photography, as I am a musician and a visual artist. Combining those two passions of mine allows me to call myself a music photographer. My passion for the outdoors, preservation of nature, and wildlife allows me to call myself a a landscape photographer.

This is how I connect passions.

Photo from my trip to Boston, MA, 2010

I have been formally studying photography since about 2013, but I always think that you begin your photographic "career" once you start seeing photographically. For me, that was when I brought a 7.1 megapixel camera to Boston, Massachusetts.

I am now studying at Illinois State University in Normal, Illinois. I started off in Music Business and Graphic Design, but dropped the former after not liking the program. Not too long after that, I changed my major from graphic design to photography. I realized that most of my designs used photographs that I made, and that I found more enjoyment with making those photos than making the designs.

Rozwell Kid at Wicker Park Fest, 2018

It was in early 2017 that I started concert photography by shooting some local shows with a Canon Rebel T6i that I was borrowing from a friend. The images weren't that great, but I had such a good time doing it that I knew I wanted to continue. Lo and behold, right before the 2017 fall semester started, someone posted about Bloomington's Castle Theatre looking for a new photography intern. I jumped on that opportunity. Through that internship, which I was a part of from August 2017 until May 2018, I photographed some of my favorite bands, and some new favorites of mine. The likes include Portugal. The Man, Lacey Sturm (Formerly of Flyleaf) Remo Drive, Hippo Campus, the Milk Carton Kids, Knuckle Puck, Free Throw, The Story So Far, Righteous Vendetta, and so many more. It was an opportunity that I will never forget. And much like my realization with landscape photography, this job told me that my professional career lies in music photography.

“Tree,” December, 2017

In late 2017, into early 2018, I got back into landscape photography after years of absence from it. I hadn't done any kind of landscape photography since 2015 when I went to the Smoky Mountains, and when I went to Starved Rock briefly in the fall of 2016. It wasn't until January 21, 2018 that it hit me that I should be doing landscape photography. I went out one foggy morning to a nearby lake, and found one of the most beautiful scenes I had ever seen in central Illinois. I made no more than five photographs, and it sparked the series that I am currently working on, "Arbor, Neighbor". This is the first fine art series that I anticipate making into a photo book, and selling among the crowds of other fine art photographers.

Memorial Day Parade, for WGLT, 2018

In the spring of 2018, I got accepted to an internship with Illinois State University's WGLT, the professional radio station for NPR. I had never done proper photojournalism before, but I had studied Robert Capa and other Magnum photographers. It's an interesting and challenging job, being a photojournalist, and I can't understand why the big bosses of major publications see it as a job anyone can do, and end up laying off all of their full-time photojournalists so their field journalists can snap a few pic on their iPhone X.

As I continue studying away at photographic and visual art practices, I can already feel a shift, or rather, a growth in my visual art. The fear of video is leaving me slowly but surely, my conceptual projects are becoming more refined, and my visual aesthetic is slowly reaching a recognizable point. I hope that this blog will allow my potential viewers and clients insight into who I am as an artist, image maker, and person in the industry. I hope that this Blog will also educate aspiring photographers and artists to expand their work and seek to improve their vision on photography.