Taylor Bellott
Photographer, printer goes for the natural look
Taylor Bellott is a well-known nature photographer in Arkansas. His photos of waterfalls, mountain vistas, forests and wildlife are displayed not only in his own gallery on Central Avenue in Hot Springs, but in galleries around the state and beyond.
His nature photos are distinctive for their colors and his ability to capture what he calls the “magic light” found at the right place and the right time.
Once he went to Colorado, and he had one picture in mind.
“There was a mountain range with a lake in front of it, and I knew the exact shot I wanted,” he said. But when I got there, it was gray and overcast. So I waited for three days because I was determined to get the shot.”
Finally, the skies cleared and the lake waters calmed, and Bellott got the shot he wanted.
This exacting concept for a photograph is not a technique he was taught in art school or developed over a long career as a photographer. The 55-yearold Bryant resident learned about color, composition and light as a printer.
“I always had an interest in cameras and photography, but I took mostly vacation snapshots,” Bellott
I am always trying to capture the magic light. Light is everything, and I love color.”
Photographer and printer Taylor Bellott
ON WHY HIS NATURE PHOTOGRAPHS ARE CALLED SPECTACULAR
AND COLORFUL
said. “I got interested in composition working for Peerless Printing making color corrections and building pages for the Neiman Marcus Catalogue.
The Dallas-based upscale department store is famous for its Christmas catalogue with a dozen or so ultra-expensive his-and-her items that are unavailable in stores, such as his-and-her helicopters, a pair of watches for just over a million dollars and one-of-a-kind automobiles.
“I was working on their photographic images, and they had high standards on what we were doing every step of the way,” Bellott said. “We would get in some images that we really had to work over to meet those standards.”
Like many snapshot photographers before him, the printer looked at some of the images he received and said, “I can do that.”
Armed with the knowledge he had picked up while improving other photographers’ images, he turned to capturing scenes of natural beauty in his home state.
“I grew up in an outdoor family, hunting and fishing,” he said. “The photography goes hand in hand with that, merging my prepress experience with a lifetime spent in the outdoors of Arkansas and the Rocky Mountains, backpacking and camping with my family and friends.”
Before an exhibition of Bellott’s work at the Bob Herzfeld Memorial Library in Benton in 2009, Erin Waller, now director of the Saline County Library, commented on the photographer’s Arkansas images.
“We all know that Arkansas is The Natural State,” she said, “but Bellott’s work gives a new meaning
to the phrase. He is able to capture images that make you question whether or not you are worthy of sharing the space.”
“I hope I create images that bring to life the images found in nature,” Bellott said.
Bellott was in Monticello, where his parents were attending college. After his father graduated, the family moved to Bastrop, La., where Bellott’s father worked in the office of a paper mill. In 1971, they moved to the Landmark community in Pulaski County, south of Little Rock.
In high school, Bellott met Brenda, who became is wife. She now helps run the Taylor Bellott Nature Gallery in Hot Springs and is his biggest booster. She said he learned his craft while working two jobs to support his family.
“He would work at our sporting-goods store during the days, and at night, he was at the printers,” Brenda said. “We would get three to four hours of sleep in between, and that went on for a long time.”
Bellott said that at the printing company, working “the hours nobody else wanted to work and doing the jobs no one wanted to do” helped him learn every step of the printing process. He said that when digital photography came into its own and computers began to be used to process images for printing, he knew it was time to put his skills to use for himself.
“I purchased the first digital SLR camera made for personal use and started taking pictures,” he said.
He was already spending hours in front of a computer retouching photos for clients, and then he could work with his own images.
As Bellott traveled around the state capturing images of nature, he began to show his finished works to galleries and at special events around Arkansas. He sold his first picture in 2000.
“It was a shot of Blanchard Springs in Stone County,” Bellott said. “A gallery in Mountain Home was the first to agree to show my work. I think I got $30 for it.”
When Peerless Printing closed its Little Rock office in 2007. Bellott was printing his own work out of a studio in the garage of his Bryant home. His photos were being displayed at galleries around Arkansas, and the couple began to think of opening their own gallery.
“We needed to be in a town with a high tourist volume,” he said. “We looked at Ashville, N.C., Gatlinburg, Tenn., and a couple of places in Colorado; but we have family roots and ties, so we didn’t leave Arkansas.”
So looking for a tourism town in Arkansas, Hot Springs was the logical choice, Bellott said. They opened a gallery in the Temperance Hill area of Hot Springs in 2011. They then moved the gallery and commercial printmaking studio downtown.
“The exposure is huge,” Bellott said. “My work has sold a lot better here, and the printing business has grown.”
His colorful nature scenes have become a hit with decorators of commercial buildings and homes.
“Recently, Arkansas First Bank and Trust purchased 54 pieces of my work for their home bank in Jacksonville,” Bellott said. “There are 20 other pieces that are going into a branch office.”
Not only are prints of his existing work being sold, but works are being commissioned as well.
The first thing that grabs the attention of the viewer is the color in Bellott’s pictures.
“I am always trying to capture the magic light,” he said. “Light is everything, and I love color. I work with color through the entire dynamic range of the images so that it gives a feeling of depth and dimension.”
As a printer, Bellott also works to reproduce the work of other artists, including transforming paintings into prints.
“I will take a photo of an artwork and convert it to a TIF file, which is a large digital file with high resolution. I will working on getting the color just right and make a proof,” he said. “Then I compare them, and I return to the computer and finetune and make another proof. I will do that an average of five times. By then, I have the colors matched.”
While Bellott enjoys photographing his home state, he loves the American West for its dramatic beauty, he said.
“In the West, the expanse is awesome, along with the terrain and imagery,” Bellott said. “I want to produce that beauty. I want the viewer to see and feel what I experienced at that time and place.”
Staff writer Wayne Bryan can be reached at (501) 2444460 or at wbryan@arkansasonline.com.