WORDS Tara Crutchfield
PHOTOGRAPH Simply Red Photography LKLDlense
LKLDlense Capturing her hometown in both spirit and pixels, graphic designer and photographer Emily Mort uses her talents to furnish all the Lakeland feels on what started as an Instagram page, LKLDlense.
Those community connections have helped Mort immortalize quintessential Lakeland through LKLDlense. Her favorite shot is of an electric blue and white Southgate sign illuminating what’s left of a departing burnt orange sunset, mirrored on her car. “I’m having a love affair with this sign right now,” she said. “I’m just obsessed with it.”
Mort hails from Lakeland, born and raised. She has an associate degree in Design and a bachelor’s in Marketing and now works as the Marketing Director at S&D Real Estate, with whom she’s been for five years. Additionally, Mort operates her own design and photography business, which helped pay a sizable portion of her student loan debt. She started the business, freelancing graphic design work including original illustrations, logo and brand design, and advertising for local companies.
Her hometown love stretches beyond the borders of a photograph and into the Lakeland-centric merch on her Etsy page. Her shop, EMortDesign, has swan swag, including shirts and posters with a crown-sporting swan, captioned ‘LKLD Royalty.’
As for the photography piece of her design and photography business, Mort makes herself available to family and friends for wedding, graduation, and event photography. “I honestly have been interested in photography since I was ten years old,” said Mort. She loved animals and wanted to capture them in photographs. She remembers getting her first camera at age ten, which started her love affair with the hobby. Mort thought of it as just that, a hobby, until college. One of her professors dedicated an entire class to photography, and that’s when Mort says she knew it could be something more.
Near and dear to Mort’s heart are her portraits of Lakeland’s royal swans. An amiable quote on her design website reads, “One time the Queen of England gave us some swans, so yeah, we’re a pretty big deal.” That quote is immortalized on prints and shirts available for purchase on Etsy as well.
In May of 2020, Mort created the Instagram account LKLDlense and released her collection of hometown images. “During that time, everyone was so confused. We had no idea what was going to happen. We had no idea what was going on, everything was shut down,” she said. She had seen the struggle local business owners were going through with posts on social media. “I realized that a lot of these small businesses are really hurting during this because they have to be closed.”
“The one thing that I have noticed in my travels… there really isn’t another community that is as strong and as connected as Lakeland. […] It’s so unique, and we have this really big arts scene that’s going right now. To me, it’s just a wonderful place to be creative.”
“Since I grew up in this town, I have heard that fact a thousand times, and I’m like, ‘I get it. We got some swans one time; it’s a big deal, I understand,’” she said good-humoredly of Lakeland’s beloved bevy.
What has LKLDlense meant to the photographer? “For me, it has been an escape. It was a way for me to escape the pandemic in a way – it was a way to force me to go out of my house and capture things that were still beautiful. Yes, the world is horrible in like eleven different ways, but our city is still beautiful,” she said.
She recalls sitting on her back deck one evening, scrolling through her personal Instagram, and realizing just how many Lakeland photos she’d taken. She had enough to start an account all its own. “I wanted this whole Instagram to be about the community. I wanted it to be community-focused,” she said. “I wanted it to be just about how beautiful and strong our community is as a whole.”
Mort admits she didn’t expect LKLDlense to take off like it has, that it was first designed to be a place for all the photos of her hometown to live. Because of the brand’s growing buzz, the designer and photographer plans to expand her Lakeland line on Etsy and put together a Lakeland calendar.
Mort started LKLDlense with the photos she already had and set out to add to the growing collection of Lakeland moments she’d captured. Followers compounded, and with them, Mort’s appreciation for the area. “I, as a person, started experiencing more of the community,” she said. “I think I needed that. I needed to reconnect in my town at that time, specifically since it seemed like everyone was so pulled apart.”
“I hope it turns into this wholesome place where people go to have something positive come up on their feed. There’s so much negativity on social media right now that I wanted to create something beautiful that everyone could be proud of, like ‘That’s my hometown.’”
Using a Canon 90D, Nikon P900, and even her iPhone, Mort captures the essence of Lakeland from its notorious neon signage and royal swans to local businesses and public art. Whether a flash of inspiration or an intentional shoot, she said, “I’m lucky enough to where, I’ve lived here my whole life, and I know the town layout, and I’m connected with a lot of different people because of this account and because of real estate.”
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LKLDlense www.lkldlense.com FB @lkldlense IG @lkldlense Etsy EMortDesign
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