Laurie Lohne
Egrets and Spoonbills
Vibrant painted buntings, graceful snowy egrets, sweet spoonbills and gorgeous scenery caught our attention as Laurie Lohne’s photos popped up on Facebook. We dug a little deeper and discovered Laurie had recently published a book entitled Birds of a Different Feather. Even more intriguing was learning that she had created this photographic reference to many of our most commonly seen birds here in the Golden Isles because she had been looking for a simple bird book like this and was unable to find one. The books out there, she found, tended to be overwhelming: too many species, too much scientific description. So, her labor of love began.
“If you had told me five or six months ago I’d be publishing a book, I never would have believed you,” Laurie says with a laugh. She quickly clarifies she doesn’t consider herself a photographer, in the sense that she’s not professionally trained. She simply likes to go out with her camera, often accompanied by her dog, Sunshine, on “photo safaris” and capture the beauty of the nature that surrounds her. “I don’t look for any certain birds, or really have any particular plan of what I’ll shoot. I just pull up maps, find areas I’d like to explore, and make sure to keep my camera handy.” Laurie and her husband, Garrett, moved to Brunswick from New Jersey two years ago when they became enchanted by the area in a search for somewhere along the coast to retire. She explains, “My husband had retired and we were thinking I might retire early, but I was still working and planning to do so for a few more years, but I would do Google searches on areas up and down the coast. We came down here to visit on a lark, but found a house while we were here, put an offer in, and it was ours! It happened very fast and I couldn’t be happier with our choice!” She considers her photo safaris, her “me time,” when she can get out into nature and feel her heart rate slow down and her body relax with the rhythm of the tides or in the quiet of the woods.
Garrett Lohne
Laurie Lohne with her book “Birds of a Different Feather”
Birds of a Different Feather is made up of bird photos Laurie has taken on St. Simons Island and Jekyll Island. “It’s about half and half, with maybe a few pictures thrown in from up in Darien, Butler Island and around there.” With this region being home to multiple stops on the Coastal Birding Trail and more than 300 bird species inhabiting or visiting, Laurie certainly isn’t lacking in subject matter! The book isn’t meant to be a comprehensive index, however, just a catalog of the species Laurie sees most commonly on her treks, and ones that will surely be encountered by visitors to the area. Beach birds, wood storks, birds of prey, and waterfowl accompany Laurie’s favorite roseate spoonbills, as well as brightly colored cardinals, painted buntings, and woodpeckers. Our popular pelicans (including the well-known “mayor” of St. Simons Island at his perch on the pier), a variety of herons, egrets, osprey, and anhinga are well represented.
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Laurie Lohne
Great Egret, Snowy Egret and Little Blue Heron
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Laurie Lohne
Roseate Spoonbill
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Laurie Lohne
Red-bellied Woodpecker
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Laurie Lohne
Male Cardinal
When Laurie began sharing the photos she took during her adventures on social media, she received compliments and positive feedback, along with encouragement to publish. In particular, she credits local attorney and musician Fred Kopp with giving her the inspiration and encouragement to put together a book. “Fred would always comment on my photos that I should do a book. He got me thinking, ‘Why don’t I?!’ So without him, I probably wouldn’t have done this. Putting this together, I relied a lot on Google and doing my own research to write the content and to publish it. I really am just winging it!”
For many people, the idea of publishing a book would be daunting, but the idea was’t completely foreign to Laurie due to her professional background as a creative professional who's been creating innovative concepts and compelling design for nearly two decades. Laurie graduated
Laurie Lohne
Painted Bunting
from Parson's School of Design in New York City and worked as an Art Director for Bloomberg, Merrill Lynch, Creative MediaWorks, Frank Advertising and World & Main. She used to design book covers, so now all she needed to do was fill the pages of one too. While she admits, it was a challenge, she had plenty of help from her family, who served as editors, and the keen eye of Golden Isles resident bird expert Lydia Thompson as a fact-checker. The result is a wonderful and well-designed book of crisp, colorful and beautifully composed photos accompanied by helpful information about the species, their identifiers, and their habits. It’s a terrific resource for anyone who likes bird-watching on the island or simply wants to be able to tell a heron from a egret from an osprey.
For Laurie, the book is about sharing her passion for nature and the beauty of our home and her
Laurie Lohne
Great Blue Heron
I’m not the only person in the media whose taken notice of Laurie’s photography. Her photos have appeared on Action News Jax's website and one graces the cover of the 2020 Island Directory. This month, you can find her work on display in the exhibition of “The Celebration of Birds” at the Horton Gallery on the Brunswick campus of the Southeast Georgia Health System. To see more of Laurie’s work and find out where Birds of a Different Feather is available, follow Laurie Lohne Photography on Facebook. And don’t be too surprised if you see her out at Gould’s Inlet or back at the lake behind the old amphitheater on Jekyll, snapping away. She’s thrilled that even after two years here, the enchantment hasn’t worn off. Hopefully it never will.
