Baildon wedding photographer Laura Adams set up Lens Eleven to get more women confident behind the camera

“I thought my life was over when I got sent back, but actually, it turns out it was just getting started,” says Laura, 40.

When the Baildon mother-of-two, who grew up in Horsforth, returned to England she worked in office-based buying roles and later as a construction firm’s assistant project manager.

Things changed, though, when she became pregnant and working on site became “unfeasible”.

In an uncharacteristic move, she called her husband James, a digital consultant, and said: “I'm not going to go back. I'm finished.”

After the birth of Sonny, their first child, seven and a half years ago, she picked up a camera.

“I became a mum, but I'd lost everything else. I didn't have a career anymore. I didn't know what I was doing. I hadn't really found my purpose. So as soon as I picked the camera up, it just slowed everything down,” she says.

She photographed her family – after Sonny, they had a daughter, Silva – sharing the pictures on social media channels such as Instagram.

"They're my muses,” says Laura, of her children.

She would be contacted by friends and strangers asking her to capture their loved ones too, and soon enough, Laura was making a living as a professional photographer, snapping memorable celebrations such as weddings.

It marked a huge change in her life - she’d swapped the “traditional route” of “good qualifications, go to uni, get a job” to carve out a creative, self-employed role.

She says: “I think we are told that creative jobs don't necessarily earn you a lot of money. But I just feel like if you do throw everything at it, and it is a passion and you work hard, then you can make a really good living off it.”

The move got her off the “conveyor belt of rewards” she had in school and previous work, where she was “looking for external praise all the time”.

And this year, she has won wedding photography company of the year in the Yorkshire Prestige Awards.

But in 2020, like so many others, her work stalled pretty much overnight when the pandemic happened. That’s when she got to work on Lens Eleven.

It offers various photography and film-making classes – such as beginners, creative photography and business e-courses – as well as access to a community of like-minded creative people. There is also a membership option with features including continued advice, the ability to share new work and opportunities as well as regular photography and business challenges.

As well as support through the online portal there are in-person meet ups and events.

More than 1,000 women have used Lens Eleven, says Laura.

Part of the reason she set it up is because she believes that, generally speaking, women and men learn differently.

“Men learn technically, so they just want to know the figures. They want to know, ‘If I do this with the camera, what's the exposure going look like, what is the perfect figure?’ And for women, it's very emotional.”

She adds: "It just seems like they (men) don't have that mental block, whereas women learn it and they go, ‘Oh my God, I know how to do it now, but I don't dare share my pictures. What will people say?’ And I just realised that there was so much work. Anyone can take a picture but no one sees the world like you do – the way that we've been brought up, our memories, our holidays, our nostalgia, what all that means. That's how we take pictures. That's how we compose them. And men didn't really respond to the way that I taught that.”

Julia Pouly, a qualified psychologist based in Hamburg, is on hand as a point of support and guidance for participants.

She’s one of a number of people who, after completing a Lens Eleven course, have set up their own venture with the platform.

Others working on the platform include Faye Kenny-Broom, who is on board as marketing projects manager, Leanne Hanna is film-making instructor and photographer Faye Hatton provides feedback.

Social meet-ups include ‘Lens Fest’, the most recent of which took place in Norfolk, and next year will be in Porto.

In the future, Laura is hoping that more women set up their own courses on the platform and that the membership grows too.

And the name, Lens Eleven?

It harks back to that time Laura was living near the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland, when in 2009 everybody had to turn up to her fancy dress party with something beginning with ‘L’ for her name. Laura decided to dress up as a bingo ball with ‘Legs 11’ written on it – a joke about her long legs, she says.

“I remember thinking, God, this is as good as life’s going to get. I’m dressed up as a bingo ball, this is like an iconic moment of my life - I’m loving life - but then actually I wanted to call it Lens Eleven because it turns out, life actually does get better.

"I’m actually feeling happier now than I was then, which blows my mind because I’m not in Aus doing a bungee jump in a bingo ball, I’m actually teaching photography to all these women and finding my purpose and just being so filled up with it every day.”

To learn more, visit the Lens Eleven website: www.lenseleven.com