About Me
Hey, my name is Callan Belmonte and welcome to a little snippet of my life.
A little bit about myself; I grew up in a small town in Australia, close to the coast. I started work in the automotive scene as an auto electrician at the age of 17, just after leaving school. It wasn’t until 2017 at the age of 20 years old when I bought my first camera.
The Canon 77D was my first camera, which I purchased after wanting to get into making short videos of me and my friends. After playing around with the camera, I quickly realised that shooting videos was harder than originally expected. While learning how to use the camera I starting taking some photos, shortly after this my love for photography starting to grow immensely. I would go out most nights after work with my friends and just experiment with all types of photography, from portraits of my mates to long exposures of the milky way.
From 2017 until the end of 2019 I took thousands of photos with a strong growing passion for photography and was seeing a lot of improvement within my work. I also picked up a second hand Canon 6D Mark 2 in June of 2019 which would replace the 77D as I really wanted to dive deeper into astrophotography. However, not long after this the pandemic began which had a huge impact on my photography. From early 2020 until the middle of 2021 I didn’t shoot many photos until my best mate had his first big DJ gig and asked me to shoot a few photos of the night. At the time I did not know that this one night would change my photographic career.
Some time after that night a guy reached out to me with a job opportunity of taking photos at one of our local nightclubs, this was the first time I had ever been offered a paid photography gig. For the next two and a bit years I would shoot social photos every Saturday night. This new pathway reignited my passion for photography and I enjoyed shooting every weekend, making a lot of great new friends and connections in the process. I definitely think this had an impact on my art style and i found I loved capturing candid moments of peoples emotions and incorporating that into the photos I produce now.
After wanting to travel for years but never going through with it, I finally made the decision to head to Europe/UK. After months of planning and talking with friends and family I bit the bullet and quit my job of 7 years in January of 2023 and headed off. This was a huge leap for me as I had never solo travelled anywhere before but something about diving into the deep end excited me. Fast forward to early 2024 I have been lucky enough to have travelled to 7 different countries and am now based in Edinburgh. I have made so many great friends along my travels and have plans for many more adventures before my return to Australia.
If you have made this far I just want to say thank you for reading about a brief part of my life and thanks to everyone for the ongoing support. I hope my photos bring you as much joy as they give me. All the positive feedback keeps me going and pushes me to try take the best photos possible, and for that, I am super grateful.
