Melodie Yvonne Ramey grew up in the small southern Indiana town of North Vernon. She picked up her first camera at the young age of 5, and was immediately hooked. Melodie says, “I couldn’t tell you the name brand of my first camera offhand, but I can tell you it was a Tweety Bird camera. It’s a brilliant bright blue with Tweety Bird from Bugs Bunny perched on it. I still have it. I’m just not sure if it was the photos themselves that got me hooked or that brilliant lil yellow bird.”
Every trip, even just to the local park, was turned into a fantasy scene of her own imagination that would later be turned into epic tales in word and photos. Melodie spent her teen years learning from and mentoring under professionals such as Richard Young, John Sheckler, and The Grand Conundrum. She received an Associates of Applied Science in Visual Technologies majoring in Photography from Ivy Tech in 2002 after studying under acclaimed professors such as Hoosier photographer Darryl Jones, Jonathan Wilson, and many other masters in the field.
Melodie’s main focus has always been music photography. Growing up listening to amazing musicians like Shannon Hoon, Beastie Boys, Maynard James Keenan, Zack de la Rocha, Tori Amos, and classics like Led Zeppelin, Hendrix, Elvis, Johnny Cash and the like inspired her dream to create visual images that made people feel the way they do when they hear the music. She wanted to help people SEE the music by capturing every magical moment of those amazing shows that she dreamt of as she gazed into music magazines like Rolling Stone and Spin. Later in life as Melodie learned more about the arts inspiration came from a number of other legendary artists, visual and literary, like Annie Leibovitz, William Moortensen, John Sexton, Erik Johansson, Helmut Newton, Hunter S. Thompson, Ralph Steadman, and HR Giger.
Melodie has done numerous jobs around the country ranging from working for bands to even being the official photographer on many southern Indiana Poker Runs. Her specialties are in nature, music, and candid event photography, as well as one of a kind photographic creations. Melodie published her first print book Photographic Memories: In the Beginning, a collection of poetry, in 2011, and has since published 2 more print works, Photographic Memories: Meet me in the Middle and Hoosier Heavens, her first photo book. Melodie currently acts as publisher, editor & lead contributor at photographicmelodie.com and does freelance work with many other media outlets, venues, and artists.
Melodie says, “I started out with a Tweety bird camera and a dream and I never let go. I will always love photography and the vessel it has given me to share the images of my heart and mind with the world. I have found that every single person on this earth visualizes the world in very different ways. Some people are optimists, some are pessimists. Some people are daydreamers, and others keep their feet firmly planted on the ground. Photography allows me to show some of these different visualizations. It allows the rationalist to see that it’s okay to dream, it can show the monsters hidden in the dark, and it can show even the saddest of people that there is still joy in the world.”
