About Me — Lauri Novak

Photographer. Mentor. Lover of winter, traveling, wine and popcorn.

Image by expedition leader of me in Antarctica

I just published my 100th story so I figured it was time to introduce myself here.

I have been on Medium since 2015. My intentions back then were to use the platform as a blogging space for my photography. I didn’t write again until 2017. My publishing was pretty sporadic until this year when I decided to make this platform work for me.

Helping other photographers is something I truly love to do. This is one more avenue where I feel like I can do that.

This is me.

I grew up in the Midwest about an hour outside of Chicago. When I was 10, I received my first camera, a Kodak X-15 Instamatic. As a family, we camped every weekend and went somewhere different for our summer vacations each year. Camping along the way. By the time I was 16, I had already been to 36 of the 50 states. The camera went along, always.

When I turned 16 I got my first summer job working in a tractor parts warehouse. My life can be defined by what I bought with my first two paychecks: a Minolta XG-1 35mm film camera and a plane ticket to Lake Tahoe.