ALUMNI COR In this section of the Chameleon, we focus on alumni and faculty who are involved in the creative arts to highlight that, not only are students doing wonderful writing and art, but so are professors across campus.. The Chameleon wants to highlight not only current Norwich University student writers but also graduates to see how the creative arts have stayed with them since their time on campus. For this year’s look at alumni, Greyce Kelly Camargo Silva, one of our editors, interviewed Bailey Beltramo. Beltramo graduated from Norwich in 2017 with a Communications degree. Since then, he has become a published writer, photographer, and filmmaker who loves to tell stories.
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photography at the time and remember using Microsoft Paint to “edit” the photo by adding some sort of watercolor effect. I submitted it to the competition and surprised myself by getting an award. It wasn’t like winning that award triggered a passion for photography or anything. I didn’t really touch a camera again until I got to college. But that memory has definitely stuck with me. GK: What about video?
Bailey Beltramo ’17 Greyce Kelly: What is the first memory that comes to mind when you think of your interaction with writing, photography or video? Bailey Beltramo: When I was in third grade, I was part of a 4H group, and there was a photography competition. I had taken a photo of an animal on my neighbor’s farm. I had no knowledge of 4
BB: Video is more recent! My first prominent memory was of a video I made while living in California a year after graduating from Norwich. I went to the beach one morning to shoot sunrise photos and faced a thick marine layer instead. So, I just switched my camera over to video mode and started to shoot. I stayed up all night editing it together, hooked on this new process. I didn’t appreciate this at first, but, in many ways, video is the perfect combination of writing and photography. From journalism you learn how to understand a narrative and craft a story. You combine those elements with the camera and how to frame something. You blend in the written narrative and end up with video. Four years after making that first edit on the beach, video has become my preferred medium for passion projects.
