Biography

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Being a former Iowa farm boy in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s – Douglas Tjelmeland’s (chumaland) visual passions developed growing up on a large grain, livestock and horse farm. His passion for the horse is still immense having raised, trained, showed, judged, and taught riding for years and  for the horse as well to adapt to us. However, his other newfound passion as a youth was shooting pictures when times seemed simpler. The images he shot  then were with a Polaroid Land Camera and were much loved by family and friends as life was during that time.

After graduating in 1983 from Iowa State University during the agricultural crisis he finally secured a career in Ag Pharmaceuticals and was also farming in his family’s business. He was discovered in the mid-west and was offered an experience in the modeling industry moving to Milan, Italy the fall of 1989. He developed and advanced to the upper echelon as talent and he also lived and worked out of Paris, London and Germany before moving to New York City and signing with CLICK Talent Management. After more development and agency networking he was then represented by 22 agencies all over the world and maintains active with his mother print agent CLICK and  acting agent FLICK in Los Angeles.

As a model his major worldwide campaigns have included Perry Ellis, Corneliani, Lacoste, Henry Cotton, Valentino, exclusive Ralph Lauren Polo and others. Some of his other clients have included American and British GQ, American and British Esquire, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Mondo Uomo, FHM, Calvin Klein (fit model), PGA, Donna Karen, J Crew, Brooks Brothers, Mercedes Benz, Volvo, Delta Airlines, Victoria’s Secret men’s undergarments , top designer runway shows and vast national and international catalog clients. He has rounded his career by studying Meisner technique in New York and keeping that craft alive doing many TV commercials and some film represented then by J Michael Bloom, William Morris and CED.

Douglas now brings 30 years of experience in front of the camera modeling behind and acting also to re-developing his youthful passion behind the camera for the past 27 years. Throughout his extensive career he has learned from and shot with some of the world’s greatest photographers such as Fabrizio Gianni, Bruce Weber, Yost Wildbolz, Victor Skrebneski, Kurt Marcus, Herb Ritts, Gilles Bensimon, Pamela Hansen, Nadir, Calliope and Peter Beard to name a few.

With his magnitude of experience, knowledge, creativity, and integrity he has developed his visual passion into a successful business creating beautiful images. He creates images wanted and needed for advertising (fashion and commercial), promotional, personal presentation (models, actors, performers), weddings, and family or individual portraiture. He has assisted agencies and talent of all ages with developing beginning and established talent to pursue careers in the exciting fashion, acting, music and any other professional endeavors in the states and abroad. He has a network of talented and well-rounded professional individuals who assist him in his productions – wardrobe stylists, set design, hair stylists and make-up artists.