Perseverance and passion: Photographer finds home on Fourth Street

Rhonda Hunter says art kept her sane when her sister locked her in the closet for three days. “I colored the whole time,” she said. “I mean, it was a large closet. And my sister fed me. And I had a little training potty.”

Rhonda’s mother and stepfather had left the two alone while they went to Las Vegas. Her blind sister, who is 12 years older than Rhonda, was left in charge.

According to Rhonda, her sister still thinks the story of her locking Rhonda in the closet is hilarious.

Family life wasn’t apple pie and picnics. With little adult supervision in regards to school, Rhonda quit in the 8th grade and began cleaning houses to support herself.

Her circumstances got to her; she was mean. At least until a lady Rhonda had befriended told her not to let circumstances get in the way of her heart.

She changed.

“I don’t feel sorry for myself, and I can’t stand it when people blame things on their hard childhood,” she scoffed.

By the time she was 22, she had married and ended up in Bicknell, Ind. Unfortunately, the relationship was abusive and she eventually left him. But during that time, she met Scott Hunter, her current husband. After a seven-year courtship, the two were married and had moved to the area for jobs.

There were a few other interesting occurrences in that time. Rhonda became a private investigator and found her real dad, Andy Anderson, when she was 25. “Another private investigator from Vincennes was looking for him at the time,” she said. “And I remember he called me and said he had found my dad. I told him I was having lunch with my dad at that moment.”

Then, when she was 36, she decided to get her GED. Her son, Shawn was in 7th grade but his reading was at a 2nd-grade level. Rhonda felt limited in her ability to help him since she didn’t complete her own schooling.

Shawn’s issues inspired her but an incident at work fueled her desire to get the diploma. She and her family were living in Ferdinand at the time and she had a job cleaning houses in Santa Claus. While cleaning a kitchen floor one day, the lady she was working for and a friend walked across it. The friend was apologetic about tracking across the wet floor Rhonda was cleaning, but the lady simply said that was what Rhonda was there for; to clean the floor.

Then and there, she knew she wasn’t here to clean someone’s floor. She went back and finished her degree and then decided to attend Ivy Tech.

It wasn’t until Rhonda’s daughter — Kylee, now 14,who would rather be on a dirtbike these days — started entering beauty pageants that she became interested in photography.

Maybe it was the artistic streak.

“When I would take Kylee to the photographer, I would pose her and the photographer said I was pretty good at it,” she explained. “And he told me I should become a photographer.”

With the recommendation under her belt, Rhonda went to Walmart and bought a camera. A lady in the photo lab recommended a point-and-shoot camera  — one that doesn’t have interchangeable lenses. “And I booked a wedding,” she laughed. “It was horrible. I mean, I didn’t get paid, but it made me realize that I needed to go to school.”

She didn’t know anything about cameras, nor lighting, nor any of the other nuances of photography. She enrolled in Ivy Tech to learn about photography, but the majority of her skills have been built by pure curiosity, experimentation and tenacity.

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“I am really curious about things. Like, if I see some lighting I like, I will go out and do it until I get it right,” she said. “I call people all the time and say ‘hey. let’s go do a photo shoot.'”

Soon after starting, Rhonda, 45, was recognized by the Professional Photographers of Indiana with a merit award for a portrait she had taken. The award was quite a distinction for the 39-year-old at the time.

She credits B.C. Baggett, who has operated Picture Perfect Photographic Studio in Jasper since 1980, with inspiring her to enter the contest. He also has taught her some photographic techniques like when to dodge and burn — lightening and darkening areas of a photo to bring out features. “I was like, man, I am competing with him, but not really,” Rhonda joked about her inexperience at the time of the contest.

Her photos are a testament to the skill she has acquired through experimentation and passion. Through that hard earned knowledge, Rhonda controls every aspect of each image she takes. “I shoot everything on manual. I set everything,” she explained. “People will tell me I have a nice camera, and I tell them ‘thanks, I taught it everything it knows.’ I mean, would you tell a cook that their stove is awesome.”

Rhonda loves shooting senior pictures because it allows her to live through that time she was never able to experience in her life. “I just think it’s neat. I am proud of them and I love to hear what they are going to do when they graduate,” she said.

She recently opened her sixth studio in Huntingburg. “Every studio I have had has had something wrong with it,” she said, but Huntingburg has been perfect so far.

She opened her first studio in Rockport through a special grant that was available but the next year, the grant was no longer an option. She had to close and ended up moving in with another business, but her studio was hidden in the middle of the shop.

Soon, she moved to a garage in St. Meinrad. “And it leaked so bad,” she said.

Then she moved to Dale where she shared a wall with a fireworks shop. “As we were renovating my studio, we tore out the drywall and you could see all their fireworks through the wall,” she said. “I thought that if there was ever a fire, it was going to blow up.”

Unfortunately, the building did catch fire in 2013. Lucky for Rhonda, it happened the week after she had moved out.

She moved across the street to her next location but was never very satisfied with it.

Then one day this past spring she had to bring her daughter to her guitar lesson on Fourth Street in Huntingburg. “So, I just got back from visiting my dad in Idaho, and I am jetlagged,” she said. “And I saw this sign on the tree outside Kylee’s lessons that said donuts half price and I am on this diet, so I said, ‘let’s go get a donut.'”

The donuts were next to what was originally the Huntingburg Bank. It was empty and had a “for rent” sign in the window. Its high tin ceilings and chandelier caught Rhonda’s eye so she and her girls peered through the windows. It was exactly what Rhonda was looking for; the windows even matched a photo she had in her phone that depicted the style of windows she wanted in her studio. “All three of us were so excited about it,” she said.

While they were eating donuts, Rhonda called the landlord and by Monday she had moved into her new studio.

She has settled in and is holding sessions there now. She can be seen regularly using Fourth Street as the backdrop for portraits. During a recently shoot, a Victorian couch stopped traffic for a short time on the street.

And Rhonda is bringing the clients she has in Nashville to Huntingburg for photoshoots. Through her photography, she has worked with many country singers and built a network of trust and respect. Recently, a Nashville up-and-comer Mary Sarah was in Huntingburg to shoot photos for her album cover and the accompanying promotional pieces.

Mary Sarah has been singing since she was nine and moved to Nashville about three years ago. She met Rhonda during an Owensboro festival she was performing at earlier this year. After seeing Rhonda’s work and meeting her, Mary Sarah knew Rhonda had the style she wanted for her pictures.

And Rhonda will likely be bringing more people to Huntingburg. She has fallen in love with the area.

“I am here forever. I mean, I love it. I feel like I am on a movie set,” she said about the historic downtown. “When I first moved her, people were coming up and meeting me. The mayor even came by but I wasn’t here. We should all be helping each other and working together to make the town even bigger and better. I have been in three towns with my photography and this is the only one that really cared.”

Rhonda and Scott have three children of their own, Brittney, 27, Shawn, 24, and Kylee, 14, and adopted Rhonda’s sister’s two children, Matt, 16, and Nina, 15.

Rhonda’s business, Rhonda Hunter Style Photography is at 302 W. Fourth Street in Huntingburg. The number is 812-827-3141. It is also on Facebook.