Portrait photographer opens dream studio | It’s Your Business

OROVILLE — It was love at first click for Erin Lackey, who picked up her first camera at age 9.

“I was just fascinated that I could look through the lens, push a button and have what I saw, what I was experiencing frozen in time,” said Lackey.

For the next 22 years, the Oroville native chased her dream one shot at a time until a family tragedy propelled her to make the leap from an experienced “hobbyist photographer who sometimes got paid” to professional portrait photographer.

The oldest of the four DeVoll sisters (Lorin, Shanin and Kristin), Lackey was the “bossy one” who made her siblings and friends the subjects of early photographs, instructing them on how to dress up and staging them in poses to get “very dramatic shots of them doing things like smelling flowers,” Lackey recalled, laughing.

She funded her photography habit first through her own babysitting business and then with the wages she earned working at Feather River Cinema when she was a Las Plumas High School student. She shot everything in color and entrusted Long’s Drugs store with developing and printing her work. In her senior year, she chose black and white photography as an elective course.

“Learning the process, going from seeing something to interacting with the subject to pushing the button to developing film in dark to printing the pictures and presenting them to my subject, the whole process was just beautiful to me,” said Lackey. “I loved every bit of it.”

Following graduation, the budding photographer married her high school sweetheart, James Lackey; enrolled in Yuba College, where she earned her associate’s degree to become an x-ray technician; and went to work for Oroville Hospital, where she remained on and off until 2021.

“I loved doing x-rays and I was good at it,” said Lackey. “The whole x-ray process just fit with my core love of images, and the x-ray images I took were used to help people. It was a cool job I felt good about.”

In addition to working at the hospital and continuing her portrait photography, Lackey became the mother of three (Titus, Junia and Theo). In 2015, she and her husband — a pastor, sociology lecturer at Chico State and a Thermalito Union School District board member — along with their friend Matt Manera, a music teacher at STREAM Charter School, founded The Table Church.

Then in 2017, Lackey’s world was rocked when her younger sister Shanin died from complications after a fall in which she broke her neck and was paralyzed.

“Anytime something big happens in life, especially something like this with a loved one, you start to question things. You think, ‘My time is limited; what am I going to do to put love, light and hope in the world?’” said Lackey, tearing up. “I just really questioned everything, asking myself, ‘What can I do to serve, to give, to contribute to people?’ And the answer came back to using my skill and love of photography to create images of people, their pets and loved ones that could be cherished.”

Picture of success

With support from her husband, Lackey opened her first studio, Erin Lackey Photography, in a small, less than 600 square feet, space on Myers Street in 2019. By 2021, her portrait business was prospering, and she was faced with a “really hard and scary” choice: quit her job at Oroville Hospital, which she loved, and “go all in” — or let go of the dream. She jumped in with both feet, left the hospital, started doing portraits full time and, on Tuesday, opened a brand new 1,400-square-foot studio in a building she and her husband purchased at 1447 Huntoon Street.

“I’m just jumping out of my skin, I’m so excited,” said Lackey. “About 90 people attended the grand opening.”

Although she does portrait sessions “on location” at sites chosen by her clients, the new studio is spacious enough to do large family portraits as well as photograph dogs for the Pooch Playoff, an annual fundraising pet photo competition benefitting the Northwest SPCA, which she hosts in memory of her late sister Shanin. It also provides a room from which to launch her podcast, Hearts of Gold, which will highlight local people who “share their love of community by giving back.”

Lackey could easily be one of her own podcast subjects as she has facilitated the funding, building and installation of five Little Free Libraries in the Thermalito community since 2022.

But mini-community libraries, pet shelter fundraisers and podcasts aside, it’s her photography that she believes makes the biggest contribution to others. Lackey specializes in large, 30- to 60-inch portraits and can spend four to six hours in pre-session meetings, the photo shoot and post-session meetings with clients planning, designing and finally choosing their portraits.

“The digital age is great, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t want people’s cherished memories to live in pixels,” said Lackey. “Scrolling to find a memory can be a killjoy. It’s just not the same as seeing that memory on your wall and getting that daily reminder, in a slow steady little drip, feeding you the love and joy of that captured moment.

“I help families create exquisite images of love that are captured and preserved for all time.”

For more on Erin Lackey Photography, visit erinlackey.com or Erin Lackey Photography on Facebook.

Reach Kyra Gottesman at kgottesman@chicoer.com.