March Member Photo Challenge Winner

Harmony Chamberlain

About this month’s challenge:

Each month, our members are given a challenge to help push their creativity and have them learn and grow through new techniques and exercises! Those who participate have the chance to submit their results and win both a $25 gift card to Hello Storyteller, and a special blog feature with HS! For the month of March, our challenge was to Chase the Rainbow! For this project we asked our members to photograph every color in the rainbow.  Our Members were given a Challenge Guide created by Hello Pro Mentor Abi Coop giving them full instructions and inspiration to get them started.

Our March Member Photo Challenge Winner for the Chase the Rainbow Challenge was our amazingly talented member Harmony Chamberlain! We got a chance to sit down with Harmony to get to know her better! She was a joy to chat with and we know you will find her as inspiring and fun as we do!

~ Holly & Angie

Harmony’s Winning Submission

Q {Angie} ~ Hello! Good morning. How are you ladies this morning?

A {Holly} ~ Good Morning! I’m doing great!

A {Harmony} ~ Hi! Good morning! I’m doing well thanks.

Q {Angie} ~ Are you ready to get started?

A {Harmony} ~ Yes!

Q {Angie} ~ First of all, congrats on winning the Chase the Rainbow challenge. Your use of color always impresses me, specifically the way you use it in your self portrait series. The Chase the Rainbow challenge seems right up your alley. Can you tell us how you approached this challenge? What was your inspiration?

A {Harmony} ~ Thank you so much! So it’s kind of funny, but it all kind of stemmed off of planning ahead for future Hello Color projects. Last year I had done the super over the top color self portraits and this year I’m doing a more subdued version. But I started to think, what would I want to do after that? Clearly I’m having so much fun with it I never want to stop lol, but I don’t want to keep doing the same thing, so I came up with maybe doing different individual clothing items/accessories/body parts, so I had that in the back of my mind. Then I saw the Chase the Rainbow challenge, so I figured why wait? And I started going through my wardrobe and what color would work where, and it all came together.

Getting to know Harmony

Q {Holly} ~ You always do color so well. I love how you used your other color projects to spark creativity in this challenge and I love how you focused on different parts of YOU in this challenge as well! I have loved getting to know your work over the last year or so and I can spot it right away with your love of color! How would you describe your photography style?

A {Harmony} ~ Oh that makes me so happy to hear. Thank you! I feel like the first word I would definitely use is obviously colorful – although I do love a dramatic black and white too. I’d also say whimsical, a bit nostalgic, with a touch of humor. It tends to be a mix of conceptual, lifestyle and fine art. The word I’ve most often heard from others to describe my work, outside of colorful, is joyful. Which can definitely be true, but there’s some stuff that’s a little darker that gets in there sometimes too, but it makes me happy to create it, so I guess we can say joyful too.

{Holly} ~ I completely agree with whimsical and joyful! You are so very talented!

Q {Angie} ~ Oh yes, I agree with joyful! Your images always make me smile. You do emotion in general so well. A topic all photographers eventually get around to discussing is gear. So let’s have it. What kind of gear do you use? And what could you not live without?

A {Harmony} ~ I’m a Sony girl. I’ve only ever shot Sony mirrorless – started with an a5000 (which died an unfortunate death in the Costa Rican rainforest ), then an a6300, and finally an a7c, which I love! It’s a great camera and I love that it’s a full frame, but it’s so small and lightweight. I pretty much always have my camera on me, so something lightweight is important to me. My most used lens is a Samyang 35mm f/1.8, which I feel like isn’t usually the first brand photographers throw out there, but I love how light it is. I also have a Tamron 28-200, which I love for travel and then a couple other Sony & Sigma lenses, and a couple of Lensbaby lenses. I really love my off camera flash. I have a Godox ad200pro and learning how to use that allowed me to feel so much less constrained waiting for the right window light.

Oh! And I also have been playing around with a 35mm point and shoot film camera that I like to use for more experimental things like film soup. That always goes on vacation with me too

Q {Holly} ~ I’m a mirrorless girl myself… but Nikon. I’ve been shooting since before mirrorless was a thing so I started with film and then DSLR, but I agree… with the amount I travel and carry my camera with me it’s so important to have something more lightweight! On to our next question. We want to know what gets your creative juices flowing. What and who inspires you as an artist? Both photography focused and non-photography focused.

A {Harmony} ~ My inspiration comes from so many places. Off the top of my head, music, movies, fashion, history, pop culture, art, color, words and phrases, holidays, nature, pretty/dramatic light, travel. Travel was actually a big one for me, travel photography was my favorite genre before my daughter was born, but then once she was born (during the pandemic no less, when there was no travel) she became my focus and a huge inspiration to me. Now she’s less cooperative, but I still love to get her in the frame whenever I can.

Q {Angie} ~ Ooohh I agree with travel being a huge inspiration. I feel so much more inspired when outside of my normal environment. So, moving on, what about photography or the creative process excites you? What gets you picking up your camera over and over?

A {Harmony} ~ I think for me it’s having a vision and being able to bring it to life. I love coming up with ideas and then visualizing all the different components and figuring out how to make it all happen, so to speak. I love the actual act of photographing too, but once it’s captured in camera there is still more work to do. Editing is something that I tend to spend a good amount of time at, and I will usually step away from an image and come back to it a couple times before it’s done. But once it is done taking that image from an initial idea to a completed photo is so satisfying.

Q {Holly} ~ I love the shooting process myself. I also love editing and let my images marinate for a bit before really diving in most of the time. I find that if I do that it helps me create a more compelling story than if I were to rush to edit. It really is such a satisfying process! I know as creatives we all have ups and downs. I personally HATE this time of year and usually find myself feeling down about my work or in a rut due to the environment. Do you find you have these types of creative blocks from time to time? And if so, how do you overcome them?

A {Harmony} ~ Yes, definitely! Last year, sometime over the summer, surprisingly, I felt like I was in the midst of a massive creative block. I didn’t even want to pick up my camera and I hated everything I was shooting, felt like I wasn’t having any ideas that inspired me, etc. What I ended up doing was creating a self portrait about the creative block itself. I started off super lazy, I just took a selfie on my phone, but then once I started to play around with the edit to express how I was feeling, it all came to life and that really helped me. I think starting with something super small and simple allowed me to kind of take baby steps to getting back to feeling that creative energy.

Q {Angie} ~ Oh I like that! Taking your block and making it work for you. That’s genius! Starting small also takes the pressure off, which sometimes can be such a motivation-killer. That’s why I like to revisit ongoing series when I fall into a rut. It gets me out creating but without having to create a brand new concept. Do you remember a specific image or moment where you feel you found your unique artistic voice?

A {Harmony} ~ Oh gosh, that’s a tricky one (as I scroll back through my feed to try and pick a photo lol). I feel like my voice is ever-evolving, which is how I like it, I want to keep growing and changing as I change and evolve, so it’s hard to pin it on one specific image. I have my favorites for sure, but I don’t know that any one image is like “YES this is the one!”. I definitely think both when I began embracing conceptual photography and when I started really playing with color it felt more like home to me.

Q {Holly} ~ I understand that completely. I feel like my work has evolved slowly over the years too. That’s one thing I love about photography… there is always something new to learn and we are constantly growing. That’s really satisfying to continue to push yourself to learn new things continue to evolve. To me, I feel like over the years I’ve become a much stronger storyteller and it’s shaped my personal voice as an artist. My approach to storytelling has changed so much since I started (when I didn’t even realize storytelling and photography were related). How do you approach storytelling in your work? 
Has your approach changed over the years?

A {Harmony} ~ Yes! I was the same way, with not being as aware of the storytelling aspect of photography, I just wanted photos that looked cool to me lol. There were stories to be found in many of the photos, but the story wasn’t necessarily my intent at that point in time. As time has gone on and I’ve learned more I’ve definitely become much more intentional about what I include in the frame and I tend to be pretty detail oriented as far as props, etc. It has to make sense to what I’m trying to convey, not just looks pretty. Sometimes photos are more personal to me and I want to leave them more ambiguous, and open to the viewers interpretation. But I want to specific stories I’m trying to tell to be loud and clear to me.

Q {Angie} ~ I can definitely see that in your work. The details feel intentional. We can’t always control how our work is interpreted or perceived, so including the right context through details is important. So now that we’ve dug deep into your photography brain, let’s switch gears a bit. Let’s talk about Harmony the person! Tell us a bit about yourself, including 3 random facts!

A {Harmony} ~ Okay! Three random facts:
1) I’m definitely a bit of a crazy plant lady (succulents specifically), my collection right now is a few dozen plants, but at one point it was a lot bigger. I went from not being able to keep a plant alive to having a whole room in our old house dedicated to them ha!

2) I’ve done two cross-country road trips (Connecticut to Los Angeles and then back the other way later on), both with my Mom. We did a lot of Route 66 and somewhere deep in my Facebook albums there’s one called “America: As Seen Through a BlackBerry”. Super high-quality images in there, I’m sure I’d love to go back and do it again one day with my real camera.

3) I have a painting in my house that I made with a beluga whale. It was at my local aquarium as part of their animal enrichment program. I picked the colors and held the canvas, and Juno the whale did the painting. It was a super cool experience.

Other than that, I spend most of my time being a SAHM, and photography is my creative outlet. I have degrees in Theatre (makeup and costume design focus) and Museum Studies. I love travel and I want to go everywhere, but especially love Disney Parks – they’re my happy place. I also love exploring things locally as well. And I never don’t want tacos.

{Angie} ~ Your cross country trips sounds so fun! I’d love to do that some day. And a whale painting. How cool!! Plus, tacos!! Yes, please.

{Holly} ~ I can totally see you being a theatre major! And I have the exact same feelings about TACOS! Also, I’m going to have to pick your brain someday about plants. I SO want to be a crazy plant lady and I try to grow things and everything dies. Even succulents LMAO

{Angie} ~ I’ve killed my fair share of cacti.

{Holly} ~ Thank you for taking the time to chat with us today, Harmony! It was so nice getting to know you a bit better and I look forward to sharing you and your beautiful work with our community!

{Angie} ~ Yes! Thank you for chatting with us. It was fun. Can’t wait to see where you take your color project next!

{Harmony} ~ Thanks so much ladies! This was fun! Thank you for all the work you do facilitating such a great community!