About me.



My name is Bel Concepcion. I'm a photographer/filmmaker and founder of Bella Veritas. I'm 4'11 3/4". I have a BS in Philosophy and am now pursuing a degree in filmmaking. My favorite animal is the horseshoe crab and I love to play chess!

My origin story isn’t entirely frilly. I started my photography journey earnestly back in 2016 while in high school. After hanging out with my close friends, I had a sentimental moment. Being surrounded by my loved ones who had beautiful souls, I wanted to catch their essence. Most of the photos you see on this very page are from those times, undirected, and the result of people showing me their true selves.

Very quickly my practice became an insatiable obsession to capture every glimpse of humanity I could find. And although I found great success in the early years, I was still young, impressionable, and overwhelmed. So I stopped. All the concerts, senior photos, modeling sessions, and so on just faded… until I was revisited by this finicky concept from the school of aesthetics while completing my Philosophy degree:

In the ancient world, Plato viewed artists as potential threats to the human psyche, thus forbidding them from entering his “ideal” city… unless they could prove that their gifts were founded on virtue, justice, wisdom.

This concept shook me for a while, fracturing my impression of art and its purpose (I’m not a Platonist, but I was quite entertained by his work). It got me thinking about what kind of value I can bring into this world and which talents I wanted to pursue. After many years of indecision, contemplating law schools, medical schools, or even the everlasting pursuit of bartending, I finally landed on the one that called to me most. Not merely taking pictures or making silly videos, but pursuing this search for Beauty and Truth and the stories that demand a telling.

There is an undefinable trait of being that is inherently beautiful, an irrefutable merit in witnessing it, and I am privileged to transcribe it into visual media. Photography is among one of the few intersections between aesthetics and reality, and this is why I create.

With love,

Bel