Lauren Coakley wields a camera with the finesse of a fine artist
Some of the most interesting eye candy available for your viewing pleasure this holiday season is being produced by Chattanooga’s Lauren Coakley. An expert behind the lens, Lauren has the rare gift of timing. Photography is a science of moments—a fraction of a second can make the difference between an iconic shot and a blurry mess. Lauren has a knack for capturing the moment perfectly, getting that one-in-a-million photograph with an impressive regularity.
Like many artists, Lauren was originally inspired by a family member. Her older brother, Brian, took a film photography class in high school, and she remembers when he brought home his first prints from the dark room.
“They weren’t anything spectacular to him, but to me they were the most amazing black and white photos I had ever seen,” she remembers. “I was only 10 years old at the time, and this idea of seeing a scene or a subject, looking at it, exploring it from angles I normally wouldn’t, photographing it, and then creating the actual photo with my own hands really sparked a new artistic side to me.”
That year Lauren’s brother got a new 35mm camera and gave her his old one. Although she was in high school when she learned how to develop her own film, she was exploring and taking photos immediately. In the 8th grade, she got her first digital camera, and a few years later moved on to a crop sensor DSLR camera, a Nikon D80.
In 2012 she upgraded to a full frame DSLR camera, a Canon 5d mark ii. A year later, she started doing digital photography professionally by capturing portraits, events, and live music for a music production company in Knoxville.
Lauren’s work has four main influences: Jerry Uelsmann’s film photography, Kirsty Mitchell’s “Wonderland” series of digital photos, Dennis Sprinkle’s digital “Astrophotography”, and Jennifer Edge’s creativity, tattoos, drawings and paintings.
Her photography covers a wide range of scenes; she photographs anything in the world that speaks to her.
“Although my photographs vary in subject, one thing that stays constant is my use of natural lighting (with the exception of a couple of series),” she explains. “I photograph everything from the nature living around us on land to below the surface with underwater portraits. My favorite subject to experience with photography is the natural environment: both the scenes that lay unaffected by humans and the scenes we may overlook in our usually busy, everyday lives. I would like to think my photography encourages the individual to ‘stop and smell the roses’ by enhancing various particular details.”
Lauren’s extensive knowledge and skill with cameras combined with her post-processing ability gives her work a wide range of emotional expression. She accomplishes these vibrant compositions in a variety of ways.
“The process I use to create an image relies entirely on the subject I am trying to capture,” says Coakley. “For example, when I want to go out in nature on a clear night and capture the stars, I make sure all weather conditions are just right and go explore areas away from light pollution. I use a Canon 5d mark iii and mark ii camera bodies and any wide angle lens with an aperture of 2.8 or less—more specifically I use a Canon 24mm 1.4 L and a Canon 16-35mm 2.8 L. I also use tripods and remotes to fire the triggers.”
Speaking about a different process, she continues, “But if I am wanting to photograph a portrait I use a Canon 5d mark iii camera body, hand held, usually with a lens that can have a lower aperture number—more specifically I use a Canon 135mm 2.0 L as my go-to portrait lens.”
Lauren currently works as a freelance photographer and as a concert photographer for several venues, festivals, bands, and the festival coverage photography team “aLIVE Coverage”. Her most recent photo project is working with ink in water. She is doing an entire series, taking a year to photograph the subjects, which are then edited using Photoshop and Lightroom.
“Digital media has definitely made photography easier, faster, and more readily available—but as a film and digital photographer, I tend to look at them as two different forms of art,” she notes. “I can get the same outcome with both, but the mental and physical processes of getting the same photo is completely different.”
Though she intends to show her work in a gallery some time in 2017, the best place to see this artist’s spectacular work right now is on her website at laurencoakley.com