© Armando Bellmas

© Armando Bellmas

Post-assignment photos in and near Lenoir, North Carolina.

© Armando Bellmas

© Armando Bellmas

The past couple of weeks have been super busy and it’s been a blast of fun: new clients, creative assignments, the North Carolina mountains as a backdrop, another project for an awesome design firm here in Charlotte, Atlanta for some family time, a call from a big business mag, and lots of time riding north and south on Interstate 85.

Here’s some of what made the days even better:

An interview with Calvin Trillin. The man’s an absolute delight and damn good writer to boot. This interview made me feel like I was sitting at a dinner table with him in the Village instead of behind the wheel of a Toyota on a highway.

Folkmoot, the world at our doorstep. I’m so taking the wife and kids next year.

Lunch at Dot’s Cafe in Lenoir, North Carolina. Roast beef, mashed potatoes, peas, sliced cantaloupe, and true southern hospitality.

Fresh raspberries and blackberries, revisiting old friends and acquaintances, and bbq chicken and beer with cousins and in-laws on our deck.

Listening to the new Ryan Adams, The Brand New Heavies, new Spoon, The Shins, WNCW, Guy Clark, and the sweet sweet sound of my children’s voices.

More work and more good times are ahead, too. I love what I do.

Photos © Armando Bellmas

A couple of outtakes from a recent assignment. I love the 5D’s ability to handle noise well at higher ISOs. Both these images were shot at 1600 ISO. Grainy, yes, but no more than I used to see from a roll of Fuji 1600 through the 35mm.

Speaking of film, I came back home from a gig in the western North Carolina mountains last weekend high off the cool nights, non-stop shooting, and Portra love. Photos soon.

© Armando Bellmas

Each photo session is a collaboration, at the very least, between subject and photographer. There’s a point a little further beyond where that collaboration becomes a creative partnership of sorts, regardless of formalities or intents, stated or otherwise. Reaching that point is a wonderful thing. Sometimes you don’t even realize it’s happened until you create something — hell, a few things — that you’re really, really jazzed about.

Like this photograph.

© Armando Bellmas

I rarely shoot black and white anymore, film or digital. Work never calls for it and, really, I love colors and color photography so much that it’s what I prefer to shoot. However, this monochrome beauty of a photograph was made just a few weeks ago on a bustling Friday evening in the NoDa District of Charlotte. It captures the scene perfectly.

I believe that making the time to see and shoot in different ways — black and white if you shoot color, large format if you shoot digitally, digital if you shoot large format, studio if you shoot street, strobes if you shoot natural light, etc. — only makes your vision and your work better. So sometimes what I prefer gets put on the backburner for a bit while I push myself ever forward by seeing and shooting differently.

When was the last time you tried something different with your work?

All photos © Armando Bellmas

I re-read a post recently on Christine Kane’s blog about powerful intent. (It’s a wonderful post and I highly recommend reading, bookmarking, re-reading, and implementing it if it sounds like something that would work for you.) One of the points she makes is about staying true to your intent and not letting your ego run the show. I’ve let my ego tell me what to do many, many times. It’s hard to make it to go sit in a corner and let you do your thing.

I set a few goals before a recent assignment that I wanted to achieve for the magazine and for myself. I allowed plenty of time during the shoot to think through my goals, be inventive, and visualize the photographs before I took them. I pictured the photos in the pages of the magazine that hired me and in other magazines I want to shoot for, all the while keeping my vision focused.

My ego kept sneaking up behind me, though, whispering things in my head like “too bad your lenses aren’t good enough for a low-light room like this” and “there’s nothing good to shoot here anyways, just chalk it up and move on” and “what must these people think of you.” I kept pushing my ego away and refocusing on my assignment and goals. My ego would come back and I’d fight it off again, making for a shoot filled with highs and lows confidence-wise. After I was finished and on my way back to the office my ego chimed in one more time telling me “oh well, let’s hope there’s one or two shots in there that will work.”

A day or two later, as I browsed through the photos from the shoot, I saw the struggle between my ego and my vision right before my eyes. Some images were clearly ego driven, forced, off the mark, and lacking confidence.

However, the images made and driven by my vision, my intent, were absolutely wonderful (see photos above). And there were a lot more of those absolutely wonderful, goal-driven, and intentional photographs, too.

© Armando Bellmas

This is Mark. He didn’t say much while I was making his portrait but, man, did he have me in stitches with that big ol’ grin of his.

© Armando Bellmas

This is one of the first photographs I ever sold.

The band was Free Fall, one of improviser and composer Ken Vandermark’s many musical projects. The setting was backstage at the 40 Watt Club in Athens, Georgia during the Athens Creative Music Experience, a small free jazz and improvisational music festival that happened back in 2004.

I had done some design work for the festival organizers (whom I knew through the small free jazz circles I had immersed myself in during that time) and decided to head down to Athens for the whole event. I brought along a 35mm and a bunch of fast film, perfect for capturing the deep dark musical moments.

Before Free Fall was set to perform their live set (those guys rarely found themselves in the same city, let alone the same continent), one of the festival organizers, a buddy of mine, asked me if I would take a photograph of the trio, at Ken’s suggestion, while they were all together backstage. It was minutes before the show and the shoot had to happen in less time than that. I found a spot that worked and angled it so that I could catch a little play with the mirror in the room.

The next few minutes after the first shutter click were a blur. I moved around the tiny space as creatively as I could, changed angles, directed the musicians, and continually wiped my forehead on my shirt sleeves from the excitement.

When I was done Ken said thanks and to email him after the festival to talk specifics. He and the band walked out of the room.

I was by myself as I unloaded the film from the camera and labeled the roll. I sat in silence as I replayed what had just happened, still intoxicated from the moments before.

As I gathered up my gear I felt it. This was it! The sensation, the excitement, the instinct, the moment of creation. I had been commissioned to make a photograph and it was one of the greatest feelings ever.

Three years later, it still is.

© Armando Bellmas

You get a lot of curious stares when you’re up on a ladder with a camera.
“Honey, why is that man up on a ladder taking a picture of the grass?!”

© Armando Bellmas

I used to work for a photographer who would always give me a hard time when I cut part of someone’s head off in a photo.

© Armando Bellmas

This shoot with Pip Gregson a few weeks ago was a blast. It was the start of a flurry of photographic activity that has been a boon to me creatively and professionally. It’s amazing what consistent shooting and a lot of positive thinking can do.

I shot a few photos for an article on food allergies for the April 29, 2007 issue of Parade Magazine.

© Armando Bellmas

My 10-month-old daughter Sophie was my “assistant” during the food shoot in the studio. She kept trying to grab the food, though, so I had to keep her in her little play saucer while I shot. What she lacks in assisting skills she makes up for in personality and cuteness.

I saw a billboard today from a job that I didn’t get.

It was going to be a pretty big gig for me. It would’ve been a great boost to my biz in terms of exposure, money, and inroads into the ad agency that produced it.

But I didn’t get the project.

When I saw the billboard it was as if I had had the wind knocked out of me. A feeling of failure and envy crept through my mind and under my skin. It was bad timing, too. I was on my way to show my portfolio to another agency for the first time. This wasn’t the best time to have my confidence pulled out from under me, either by my own thoughts or the sight of the billboard itself.

I arrived at the agency a little early so I sat in the parking lot for a few minutes trying to get my shit back together. After a while I started to get past the self-defeating thoughts and focus on mundane or non-photography things like deleting old voicemails and text messages from my mobile phone. Anything to get my mind off of that billboard.

A few minutes passed and it was time to go in, composed and confident. From that point on things only got better.

The portfolio review went really well. They had great things to say about my work. We made plans to collaborate on an in-house project. We talked about life in Charlotte as compared to other cities we’ve lived in. In all it was positive, promising, and a perfect contrast to the events of just an hour before.

This path I’ve chosen has some drastic ups and down. In the short time that I’ve been at this full-on I’ve heard more “no’s” than I ever care to hear and have had more emails and voicemails ignored than I ever thought possible.

However, I’ve also heard more comments along the lines of “your work is really great” than ever before and have had more people trust me with my vision and their money than I ever dreamed would.

It brings to my mind a couple of lines from a tune by The Hold Steady called “Massive Nights” (taken totally out of context from the song but perfect in their isolation for this example): “We had some massive highs / we had some crushing lows.”

As my skin get thicker and tougher the lows are less crushing. Likewise, the highs get better and better. The bonus is, especially after today’s experience, that the turnaround time from low to high is getting shorter.

© Armando Bellmas

Sometimes the best photos from a shoot are made while you’re setting up and testing the lights.