Tamara Lackey: When Art Meets Business

NEW YORK, June 22, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Star power may be elusive, but it's not hard to know it when you see it.

Case in point: Blond and stunningly attractive Tamara Lackey, walking through the lobby of Manhattan's Gramercy Hotel on her way to a breakfast meeting. Voices whisper, heads turn, and no wonder. Actress? Model?  

No, she's one of the world's most renowned and successful children's and lifestyle photographers.

And then, there's all that multi-tasking -- she's a married mother of three, passionate advocate of adoption, social media favorite of "mommy bloggers," globally in-demand professional-photographer workshop teacher and convention lecturer with upcoming seminars this November in Australia and New Zealand, photo-journalist chronicler of Barack Obama, Sarah Palin and others on the 2008 campaign trail for Rangefinder Magazine (during Palin's first introduction at a Dayton event, Lackey's immediate reaction was, "Oh my goodness, it's Tina Fey!"), a savvy businesswoman who once owned a San Francisco executive-search firm and host of a popular recurring online workshop, Taking Care of Business, on creativeLIVE.com.

Now she's preparing to launch a new interview-based web series tentatively titled Redefine, featuring entrepreneurs and artists whose "inspirational advice is as important as their innovative methods"; and is also in the early planning stages of developing "a fun-reality TV series about the family image."

Her photos have appeared in Vogue, O-The Oprah Magazine, Town & Country, Parenting Magazine, The Martha Stewart Show and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, and her star is about ready to, as movie executives like to say, break big nationally. The author of numerous professional-photography books, Lackey was in New York City for a professional workshop and Q&A. Attendees stood in line to meet her personally or get her autograph on a copy of Tamara Lackey's Capturing Life Through Better Photography, a much-praised "edutainment" book plus DVD set that uses "simple tips & tricks to turn everyday snapshots into little works of art."

Let's face it, Lackey says, seemingly everyone today is a photographer. But is the novice capable of more than pedestrian point-and-click shots? "Absolutely," she continues. "The rapid rise of Instagram, a simple photo-sharing app, is proof of that. With nothing more than an iPhone camera and a series of options for quickly applying a post-processing filter to the image, everyday photographers can create timeless work. What distinguishes a series of snapshots from truly beautiful work, though, is the eye of the shooter, the way they incorporate light and their artistic methods for framing the shots, none of which requires top-grade camera equipment."

Lackey admires the work of, among others, Annie Leibovitz ("one of the first to merge fine art, photography and editorial imagery in such a striking way") and Richard Avedon ("a master of stark portraits that indelibly isolated what was genuine about his subjects"), but as she teaches others, to inspire is not to imitate. Certainly, know something about technique, lighting, framing, using the right lens and the rest, but tapping into your own particular vision and voice is what counts.

For herself, that means a commitment to shooting "intuitively" and capturing her subjects' "authentic personalities." Lackey has made an art of teaching others how to "get lost" in an interactive style that results in capturing remarkably natural -- and spontaneous -- photos and that allows subjects to experience, as opposed to merely posturing for, the shot. What results are extraordinarily expressive photos that are alive and evocative, conveying artfully what the kids feel as much as what they look like. "Excessive posing," she says, "is passe."

What will never be out of date, she continues, is the timeless importance of family. There are altered perceptions and intriguing dynamics associated with the subject, she says, and her most influential (and personal) book achievement may well prove to be Envisioning Family: A Guide to Making Meaningful Family Portraits of the Modern Family, scheduled for publication this fall.

If it proves to be a cross-over breakthrough in terms of its photos and text resonating with photography pros and amateurs alike, it will be because, as Lackey says, family photography "defines as well as captures." Families change, she says, "but their images frozen in time -- what they reveal about the mood and behavior of the photographer as well as the subject -- are touchstones that tell us a little bit more about who we were and how we wanted to be seen by others."  

For information, go to http://www.tamaralackey.com

To see a picture of Tamara, click here: http://bit.ly/m0ieLf

Contact:

Alan Appel
Lande Communications
212-706-9003
[email protected]

SOURCE Tamara Lackey