A native of Bloomington, Indiana,  James Terman earned degrees in chemistry, physiology, and medicine from Indiana University, and received post graduate training in Dallas, Texas, and at Vanderbilt University. Certified in Internal Medicine,  his practice with a multispecialty teaching institution in Wisconsin as an internist with an interest in infectious disease continues for 38 years with detours into and out of retirement.

  As an army dependent schoolboy in Occupied Japan, he watched his parents purchase a Canon IIb and begin darkroom work.  In youth he had contact with noted photographic educator Henry Holmes Smith,  and built his own tiny basement darkroom. Career and family pushed photography into the background for many years.  In the 1980s the staff of the Communications Department of University of Wisconsin-La Crosse began bringing in noted photo leaders who carried on the tradition of the "West Coast" school of photography led by Ansel Adams. Starting with a used 4 x 5 Crown Graphic and with the   the stimulation and  influence of a series of intense workshops from John Sexton, Bruce Barnbaum, Ray McSavany, and the late Cole Weston, Jim has spent the ensuing years  working with medium and large format film-based equipment. 

 While not dismissive of the digital revolution, Jim prefers to work with traditional photographic methods.   He still owns the family  PX  1949 Canon  IIb. but presently uses a Hasselblad 500 CM, a Toyo Field View, a Mamiya 7 II,  a pair of YashicaMat TLRs, and a Fuji GS 645. He does his own darkroom work, matting, and framing.