Nice to meet you, I’m Adam Belmont.
The only fully black & white family documentary photographer in Dallas - Fort Worth, capturing the everyday with a photojournalistic approach.
Corporate career by day, documentary photographer mornings, nights and weekends.
My photographic journey began when my first child (read: princess) entered the world in 2017. I consider bringing home a child to be probably one of the most natural opportunities for an adult to pick up a “real” camera for the first time, especially for those who weren’t raised with any influences in photography growing up from family or other outside sources, as was the case for me.
During my wife’s pregnancy, I remember thinking to myself, “I’m literally dedicating every free minute I’ll ever have to raising future children, so why not use all that time already invested in them to document their development and upbringing? After all, I’ll be there the whole time anyhow, and this way future children can see how they were raised through the eyes of their parent.”
I figured this is worth a shot for at least the first handful of months to see if this was something that would ‘click’ with me or if it were nothing more than a fleeting interest, and picked up my first camera three months before the due date. Knowing I was soon to be exhausted, sleepless and busy being a first time father soon enough, I gave myself a few months to learn the basics of operating a camera, as it was completely intimidating to hold something with so many buttons without any prior knowledge on making a proper picture. I quickly got to work on practicing and reading up on photography as much as I could.
Before my daughter’s birth, I knew I wanted to approach documenting her life in a unique way. I specifically envisioned capturing childhood and her development through what I later learned was from a reportage, photojournalism and documentary perspective (through more of a ‘fine art’ lens) in which I captured the ‘real’ - the honest moments, the quiet moments, the mundane moments, happy moments and, yes, even the challenging moments. For what is ‘good’ without the . . . ‘less good’? The concept of what is real doesn’t discriminate or only contain smiles directly at the camera.
It is important to me to catalog those everyday experiences and a child’s growing curiosity with the world. That’s what got my gears going and turned me on, and that’s what I’ve pursued ever since.
My biggest photography turnoff is looking at coordinated family outfits and posed, “I paid good money for these pictures” expressions in which people might simply recall, “remember that time when we went to the photographer”?
Instead, when I look at my pictures, I want to re-enter the moment illustrated in the photograph and bring me back to that moment - what I felt, what others felt, the atmosphere of the moment, and everything that goes along with bringing back the past in a true-to-life, candid fashion.
My passion for family documentary photography specifically covers documenting my childrens’ upbringing because, quite frankly, that’s all I have time for outside of work hours. But I hope to expand that over my life into the realms of street photography, exploring social dynamics within local communities and ultimately, through all facets, capturing the human condition in an honest, intriguing and thought provoking manner.
Needless to say, I caught the bug and the rest is history. I don’t think I’ll ever put a camera down for as long as I’m able to create.
I invite you on my journey as I look to capture the ‘everyday’ whether at home or on the streets, and finding a moment to pause and appreciate those precious fleeting moments that never repeat themselves in the same time and place - and life - to the fullest.
I, my wife and three daughters (Sienna, Isla & Elora) reside in Dallas-Fort Worth, TX.