Interview With Tonda LeGarde: Photography By T
December 16, 2009
Enjoy the following personal, intimate, entertaining and overall really excellent interview with Nashville, Tennessee based professional photographer Tonda LeGarde – Photography By T.
Q: How do you describe your photographic style?
A: I’m a multi-faceted Artist, so my style is Unique. Blurring the boundaries between Sexy-Chic-Edgy-Raw-Creative-Dreamy-Imaginative-Innocent, very eclectic! What is methodical to most, just comes unconsciously natural to me.
Q: Do you like to talk about yourself or your pictures? If yes, about what aspects of photography? If no, why?
A: Talk about myself-sometimes. Talk about my pictures – yes, sometimes, I’d rather be finding out what makes you tick and Photograph it!
Q: How would you describe your attention span?
A: Depends on what the subject matter is. Very passionate if the right chord is played, otherwise all over the place.
Q: When did you decide to become a photographer?
A: I don’t think I have ever decided to become a photographer, it just has always been so. I decided to follow my passion after many years of photographing because I loved it. The turning point to professional, was my daughter in-law wanting to become a professional photographer as well, it inspired me to go to school for photography.
Q: What does photography mean to you?
A: Breath taking, timeless memories captured in a still photograph that will outlive me.
Q: Can you recall the first photo you took that made you go WOW!?
A: From what I recall, I would have to say it was of some colorful birds in Florida when I was about 13. I am still impressed at the colors, sharpness and composition of these photos.
Q: Do you have any formal training regarding photography?
A: I have worked behind the cameras for years watching professionals do their magic and doing my own. I presently attend Nossi College of Art in TN, and I have 1 semester to go.
Q: How technical is your photography?
A: My photography can be simply simple or extreme. The technical, more often the not is pretty simple.
Q: How do you feel about cropping?
A: I began with a film camera back some 20 years ago, so I believe finding and taking the photo correctly the 1st time leaves no room for cropping. But with Photoshop today sometimes there is more to find in the picture once it has been reviewed, thinking outside the box can result in multiple crops. Back in the day this was not as easily possible.
Q: Where is your favorite place to live and work as a photographer in the World and why?
A: I have not been very many places, so truly I can not say my favorite, but the children and people from other countries and lifestyles has always captured my heart and eye, leaving me with a yearning to photograph them. My answer to this would have to be in type. The beauty I see, whether it is tragedy or perfection.
Q: Define the word “beauty”!
A: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. To me, everything holds to some degree, Beauty. Beauty is the essence of life, combinations of qualities that please the intellect or moral sense, the beholder is the judge.
Q: What is your most favorite and least favorite word in photography or life? How do they make you feel?
A: That’s not an easy answer, just as a lot of these other questions. There are many. Words, if mentioned in one moment can crush you, and on other occasions they will roll of your back. I like to believe in sticks and stones, but sometimes the stone hits me.
Q: How does your personality change when you look through the camera?
A: My personality changes with and depends upon what I am photographing. When I look through my camera I become passionately focused and the world around me dissolves.
Q: How do you feel about missed shots which cannot be recreated?
A: AAARRRGGG!!!- for a moment. We can always attempt to recreate, sometimes with awesome results!
Q: Ever concerned about failure?
A: No, failure is but a stepping stone. Frustrating, but still an opportunity to learn.
Q: Who are your influences?
A: Avedon, Antoinee Verglas, James Nachtwey, Elliot Erwitt, Ansel Adams, Duane Michals, Giuliano Bekor, and more.
Q: What is your favorite image, either your own or someone else’s or both? Describe its creation or meaning to you?
A: I do not have a favorite, there is so many different photographs of my eclectic tastes.
Q: Describe a day in your personal or professional life.
A: Crazy, busy sometimes, but for the most pretty normal I would like to think.
Q: What are the biggest personal or professional challenges you face on a daily basis?
A: One of my biggest challenges is saying No!
Q: What has been the single biggest obstacle against growing as a photographer in whole?
A: My single biggest obstacle against me in growing as a photographer is time.
Q: What are your favorite subjects to photograph?
A: My favorite subjects to photograph is people and nature, but I can walk down a path and be astonished by a pebble and want to photograph it.
Q: Tell your funniest, scariest, most bizarre, most touching story from a photo shoot!
A: My scariest is when I was doing a shoot with a couple, and needed to change lenses on my camera. I was so in the moment, and couldn’t hardly wait to take the next shot, that while changing the lens I dropped it, and about died. It broke, cost a lot to fix, but I kept on trucking with the other lens.
Q: Have you ever thought about or actually stopped doing photography? What were the circumstances?
A: I will never stop photographing, it is who I am. I do question whether I am good enough to be called professional. I desire honest critic in my work, which is so hard to come by, and so many different personal tastes to please. I really don’t care what they think of my work, I just like to hear there opinion on it.
I constantly battle between doing it professionally or just doing it because I love it. I do professionally love it, but that is not why I do it ultimately.
It is and always has been a natural love to photograph, I need not to be paid for it to do it, nor do I do it to benefit from an audience. I hit a hill and stopped for about 2 years. The mother of my husband had passed and I photographed the funeral, thinking the family might want the pictures to remember her by later on. To my dismay, some were horrified, she meant a lot to me. I never thought about it until some time later. I realized it seemed like forever since I had picked up my camera, 2yrs.
Q: Do you ever have photographer’s block and if yes how do you deal with it?
A: Not really, but I’ve had it before I think, and it was not a matter of blockage, it was a matter of interest and difference of opinion. If someone wants a particular photograph and you find it uninteresting, repetitious or redundant, then if that is blockage, then I have had it. As one once said “Life is to short to be distracted by pesky, mundane questions that plague most photographers”…
Q: What types of assignments are you attracted most?
A: Fashion, Entertainment, and Travel/World Journalism.
Q: Describe what black and white photography means to you?
A: Timeless!
Q: Do you think of yourself as an artist and what do you think of the word artist?
A: Yes, I am in the true sense an Artist. Artist: Imaginative-Creator-Illusionist!
Q: What has been the most surprising or most predictable reaction to your photographs?
A: The most predictable is you either love it or not, Not much surprises me!
Q: Tell a little secret about yourself that no-one knows …
A: I’m pretty much an open book, so if there are secrets to be known then either you don’t know me at all, or you haven’t taken the time to get to know me.
Q: Who or what would you love to shoot that you haven’t already?
A: People and nature from other countries.
Q: What would you have done differently during your photography career so far and could this be an advice to others?
A: Advice, yes. I would have gone to school or studied it in further detail much earlier in life, rather than winging it by the instinctive love for it.
Q: What are your thoughts on the paparazzi and their effects on photographers and photography?
A: Bad publicity is good publicity for them, and I suppose they love the money. I personally have no desire to invade a persons personal space without their consent.
Public photography is just what it is, public, but physically hurting someone to get the shot is not the way I would do it.
Q: How do you feel about digital manipulation and to what extent do you utilize it?
A: Digital manipulation is pretty cool. Extreme digitally enhanced photographs, barely enhanced, and not enhanced at all, should be recognized and displayed in a different category for what they are. In my opinion, a real photographer wouldn’t have to do a thing to their photographs except print them. Digital enhancement is leaning more towards art.
Q: What other thoughts would you like to share?
A: This was long, I’m surprised I actually did this.
Visit Tonda’s photography website, Modelmyhem, MySpace, Facebook and Twitter profiles.
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