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Jamie Elman has always lived around cameras.

As an actor on NBC’s Sunday Night drama “American Dreams”, Jamie now makes his living in front of cameras but it started much earlier with Jamie’s young fascination with photography. Jamie grew up with his mother always snapping photos, recording the memories for the family albums.  Soon Jamie had his own camera and started documenting his life, taking photos of friends and family.

With a natural talent for acting, it wasn’t long before Jamie found cameras trained on him. Jamie’s career started in his teens with roles in Feature Films alongside stars such as Keanu Reeves in the sci-fi film “Johnny Mnemonic”. That was soon followed by a number of films and television spots including the role that established him as a celebrity when Jamie landed the starring role of “Cody” on the Canadian Television series “Student Bodies”. Currently Jamie has moved to American Television with a recurring role as “Luke” on NBC’s “American Dreams”.

Being on sets so much has kept Jamie shooting his own photography and recently he started utilizing some professional techniques from set to expand and explore his own photographic vision. And since buying a digital camera and laptop, he has been documenting his life behind-the-scenes on the set of “American Dreams”.

Jamie recently sat down with TakeGreatPictures to give us a sneak peek at what he’s been shooting, giving us “a day in the life” on set, and chatted about his views on photography, Canon Elph Digital Cameras and Art Garfunkle.

TGP: Did you always have an interest in photography when you were younger?
Jamie Elman: I did. I recently went home and started looking through our old family albums and saw how my mom was always taking photos. I found photos of me at camp when I was 12, my mom documenting our lives. She was just shooting with an old camera and still those photos made memories. I was so used to being around that growing up that it seemed natural to have a camera around.  So as I grew older, I found I was the one always with a camera. My friends got a bit tired of it, but I was trying to document my life. I enjoyed having photos to look back on and I didn’t understand why everyone wouldn’t want to capture those memories. Now, as an actor, I have a new digital camera, a Canon Digital Elph (the Canon Powershot S400 4.0 Mega-Pixel – TGP) and an iMac, so I’m able to “shoot and show”, like a digital photo album. In a way I’ve gone back to sitting and looking through photo albums. But now it’s on my screen and it’s so much easier.

TGP: What inspires you to take photos?
Jamie Elman: Mostly friends and family. Vacations, things I do, people I meet. I’m a Canadian living in Los Angeles and I still miss home. I’m pretty tied to Montreal so I have a lot of visitors come out to stay with me. So I shoot them when they are here to remember where we went. And then, since I am digital now, I can email the photos home and they can see what my life is like out here. It’s a way for me to go home much easier than actually doing it. In fact, when I first got the role on “American Dreams”, the Canon Elph was my first purchase. I wasn’t sure how long I was going to be out here because my role was supposed to be for just a few episodes. So I wanted to capture everything I did just in case it didn’t last. Luckily, my role was well-received, the producers and audience liked me, and I’m still here. Still, I keep shooting. And I just feel so lucky to be doing what I’m doing.

TGP: Do you think working in Television, where there is a creative process very similar to photography has influenced you? Has it inspired you?
Jamie Elman: Definitely. I’ve learned quite a bit from watching Cinematographers (the people who light and shoot Television and Films - TGP) work with light, angles and composition. The beauty of my shooting is that I can see things that are beautifully lit. I can watch them create compositions and I can talk to them about what they are looking for. And it has helped me with my digital camera because I am much more aware of what makes good pictures.

TGP: Are there any photographers or photographs that inspire you?
Jamie Elman: Well there are actually two mainstream photographers that I really like. I am a big fan of both Annie Liebowitz and Herb Ritts. For years I have subscribed to Vanity Fair and that is where you can see a lot of Annie Liebowitz’s celebrity portraits. And I think she’s really skilled at capturing celebrities when they are not “on”. You see them for the real people that they are. I love the photo of John Lennon she shot before he died. For some reason that shot really moved me. And I think that Herb Ritts, before he died, was also able to capture that place beyond celebrity. I respect that. And now, there is another photographer who I just recently discovered but who I love. David Hockney does these photo-mosaics where he shoots hundreds of photos of the same thing from different angles and pieces them together. I recently saw a show of his and was really blown away. It was phenomenal. And in a way, with new Elph, I can kind of do the same thing with the digital stitching program, making my own photo murals.

TGP: Do you have any personal favorite photographic moments?
Jamie Elman: I really like candid moments, moments where people are just being real. Friends sitting and laughing, my family together. I love those moments and try to capture them. But there is one moment that really motivated me to start shooting a lot again. On “American Dreams” I play a record store clerk at the “Vinyl Crocodile”. The owner is a Mr. Greenwood that we haven’t seen before. Finally one day Mr. Greenwood shows up at the shop and he’s played by Art Garfunkle. Now when I was a kid, I used to love Simon and Garfunkle. They were before my time, but for some reason I listened to their music a lot. He walked on set and this was just around the time that he had reunited on the Grammy’s show with Paul Simon, and it was just awesome. So when he showed up I was very excited to see him and work with him. And over the course of the day I shot a lot of photos, hoping to capture the day. It was a blast, he was a great guy and I now I have a bunch of photos of someone who I grew up listening to.

TGP: How has a digital camera affected your photography?
Jamie Elman: Well, I used to be a purist. I only shot 35mm cameras with Kodak Film. I thought and I still do that there is a clarity about 35mm film that digital still has to catch up to, at least in the consumer camera market. Still, now that I have a Digital camera, the pros far outweigh the cons. With my Elph, there is an immediacy to my photos. I can shoot and look at them right away. Plus, for what I do, either emailing them or printing them in regular 3x5 photos, the images  look great. Plus it is so much cheaper because I can just shoot and shoot and shoot and not worry about film. And again, I still like that immediate aspect of it. I can shoot and show it right away.

TGP: Finally, is there anything you haven’t shot that still interests you? Any project or idea you’d like to explore or capture?
Jamie Elman: I’d actually like to become better at understanding the process in general. From being on set, I’ve already learned to shoot without the flash sometimes, using the light that is there already. But I’d also like to be better at some of the other stuff I already shoot like composition. Plus, I’m trying to learn more of the technical side so that I can start to manipulate the photos in ways I haven’t done before. I recently did a movie in Munich (“Rave MacBeth”) and I did some shooting there and I tried to push my self a little bit, photographically. I also worked recently in Palm Springs and again I tried to shoot more. But, I still think that I have a ways to go because I think I could have shot better. But that’s all part of the learning process and that’s exciting.

I’m also really interested in behind-the-scenes photography. I really like taking shots of people setting up the shots on set. Like camera rigs, lighting and the things which are well-hidden but make the movie seem realistic. For example, I think it’s very cool how when characters drive a car on the street, usually the car is on a trailer that is being towed. I like looking at “making of” photos like that. I guess I enjoy the process. And maybe that’s why I like photography so much. I really enjoy the process.