Today we’d like to introduce you to Jamie Amimoto.
Jamie, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I am originally from Kauai, Hawaii, and I had an athletic scholarship to play golf at Marymount California University in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. I played golf there for my first two years of college, it was nice there in the South Bay, but I found myself wanting more, I was not quite satisfied with what I was learning, and I just fell out of love with playing golf competitively.
So I decided to try and transfer to another school, but by the time I decided I wanted to transfer I could only apply to two schools in around LA, one was USC, and the other was Loyola Marymount University. I applied to USC the day of the deadline and never applied to LMU. The day I moved out of the house I was living in I checked the mail, and I got the letter of acceptance to USC.
I have always been sort of a loner, but I always wanted to make some great friends, so I decided to go to some events and join a club in an attempt to do so. I joined a club and still didn’t really make any friends at the time, but everything changed when I went to this pumpkin carving event held in echo park by a musician I admire, Zack Villere, and I made some friends there and through those friends I made more friends and so on and so forth blossoming into the friends I know and love today. I got into photography pretty recently out of necessity I guess.
I started working with OFF THE PORCH RECORDS at the end of 2017, and we needed someone to capture behind the scenes moments on a sort of day to day basis, I bought a cheap 35 mm Olympus camera and just started taking pictures. And that started my love with photography.
It really is amazing to see the progress throughout the months, and its just so fun to get your roll of film back and look at the pictures. It is really one of the best feelings in the world when a picture comes out exactly like you pictured in your head. That is one of the reasons I love film photography, it really is an art, trying to capture the image you want on one roll of film.
I am really thankful for all of the opportunities that have come to me, everything I have done and will do is because of the friends and connections I have made. I would not be able to any of the stuff, like shooting music festivals or music videos without my friends.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
There are always struggles on the way, heck I am still struggling as we speak. There are always time constraints, as I am a full-time student at USC, I have to balance schoolwork, making money, photography, social life, its just one thing after another at this point and time in my life.
I also never had the best luck, my friends can back me up, this summer I was hit by two cars walking in crosswalks, had my car broken into, had four of my cameras stolen, had a bunch of other stuff stolen, and lost my wallet in a matter of two weeks haha.
It’s hilarious now, but when it was happening it was really tough, I can only thank my support system of my friends for my survival during that monstrosity of two weeks.
Please tell us about Off the Porch Records.
I am part of OFF THE PORCH RECORDS, and we are among other things a record label.
We are a group of seven creative people, we all have different talents. I do visuals for us, so I take some pictures, shoot and edit some videos, and this and that, whatever needs to be done I kind of just learn how to do it then do it. Then we have Nate DAE, he really put this all together, he is the defacto leader in all of this. He is a rapper, he directs his own videos usually, he has the vision, and we all do our part to make it a reality.
Nate just dropped an EP called Death by a Woman, go stream it, and we just played Rolling Loud Los Angeles, and in May we are heading to Florida for Rolling Loud Miami. Next, we have Jack Rickert who is just the coolest and nicest dude you could meet, he makes clothes, sings, models, the whole package.
Jack is just another incredibly creative person, he is the type of person to put your needs before his own needs. He is just a great dude who makes incredibly cool clothes, he has got a lot of stuff in store for the future. Next, we have Ernest Ziembroski II, he is a producer and another one of our artists.
Ernest or Erns as we call him is a just a crazy talented musician, I have no clue how many instruments he can play, but I know he can play a lot of them. He is just another great human being who has great ideas, and he also is about to unload his talents to the rest of the world. Another member of OTP is Fitsum Tadesse, Fitsum is our photographer, he’s just another amazingly creative and talented person.
Fitsum has taught me a lot of what I know about photography, and I will always be thankful for everything he has taught me. Mars is our videographer, he’s been doing this for a while in Florida, but now he is in Los Angeles with his own radio show, the Mars Files. He is literally working his dream job, and that is what we all strive to do.
And then we have Wyatt Navaro, he is just an incredibly creative and amazing person. He has done everything from shooting a music video to designing shoes. Whenever we have meetings he always has amazing ideas and great input, he has amazing art and photos. Whenever all of us come together amazing things happen.
We have thrown a couple of different events, and each one was one of the best nights of my life. Everything we do has a purpose, and one of our main focuses is just providing a place for everyone to have a good time. 2019 is going to be a big year for us, we have a lot of stuff planned, and everyone should look out for it!
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
If I had to start over, I would have been more open to be a more open person. I would want to have just put myself out there and talked to more people and take more opportunities that I was given. I was always hesitant to do new things, and if was less hesitant maybe I would have had more friends like I have now.
When I was younger, I was more worried of what others thought of me, even now I do still worry about that, but I’m not sure that will ever go away for me. Now it’s more of thing like I don’t let rule over everything I do, I get nervous whenever I ask anyone to shoot, but more often than not people want to collaborate with other people. Just kind of be more confident in myself as well.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @xofftheporchx; @jamieamimoto
- Twitter: @xofftheporchx; @jamieamimoto
Image Credit:
@jamieamimoto
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