Hi everyone! Yes, good news, I'm still alive! It dawned on me a couple days ago that I haven't wrote a single blog post all summer about what I've been up to.

And honestly, I haven't been up to too much of anything.

I know, I just graduated from photography school, I'm supposed to be like, taking the world by storm, camera in hand, one photograph at a time, right? Turns out the real world is a little harder than you might think. To be a professional, full time working photographer takes lots of time, perseverance, and patience. In the mean time, I need to hold 2 part time jobs to pay rent and keep my small business of photography going. Which, unfortunately, hasn't left me a lot of time to photograph as freely as I'd like to.

However, I've still shot some portfolio worthy things this summer that I'd like to show you, if you haven't been following my Facebook page. (Self promo plug! If you haven't already, make sure to go click "like" to keep up with what I'm shooting! www.facebook.com/jessicamummphotography)

My first outing of the summer was with a group of friends from school, exploring Peaceful Valley, just outside of downtown. If you aren't familiar with the Spokane area, you may not know that Peaceful Valley, despite its harmless sounding name, isn't the safest or nicest looking neighborhood to explore. You won't find any soccer moms driving minivans and living in suburbian style homes here.

When I first walked by this house, I immediately saw the dog and wanted to take a photo of it. Then I stopped and realized... yes, that is a man passed out on the roof of the house. We all took turns trying to guess how this whole scene took place; did he pass out drunk up there? Was he a homeless person looking for a place to sleep? Why was the front door open? This shot was easily the shot of the whole day.

This summer, I didn't get to shoot much portraiture (which is unfortunate, because it's my favorite!) but Abby and I did manage to get a trip to Colfax in for an evening to shoot with two of her good friends, Hannah and Misty. Colfax is known for being a small town stuck in the middle of the endless rolling hills known as the Palouse. Summer months in the Palouse are harvest months, where the wheat turns from green to gold and is cut from the miles upon miles of fields. We were lucky to find a field of wheat that hadn't been cut yet, so it was perfect for pictures! We also shot a bit at the Perkins house in town, which is an adorable old style Americana house with a few cute porches and various backgrounds to shoot on.

I always love having beautiful subjects to shoot with, and Hannah and Misty were no exception to that. The Palouse also offers unrivaled scenery and gorgeous evening light that's hard to find anywhere else in the Pacific Northwest.

Finally, with the big jumble of storms Spokane received a couple weeks ago, I got some of my most favorite lighting shots ever. Lightning will forever be one of my favorite things to shoot; watching the image you've been trying for repeatedly finally showing up on your screen is one of the most gratifying feelings. Sitting in a field in Greenbluff at night, looking up at the stars above you, and the storm off in the distance is one of the coolest things to experience.

These are all my favorite shots from summer. It's not much, and it's less that what I expected from myself, but it was honestly nice to just take a bit of a break from photography, and spend time with my friends. The end of August was filled with my best friend and roommate, Abby, moving out and leaving for Boise, and my good friend and new roommate, Whitney, moving in.

Starting tomorrow, the photography hiatus is officially over! I'm kicking September in to gear with two senior shoots this weekend; one on Saturday and one on Sunday. (Stay tuned, one of the shoots involves her plane. Um, hello... it's gonna be EPIC!) Then on the following Wednesday, a good friend of mine, as well as a fellow photographer and I are taking a trip to Seattle, where I plan to shoot numerous videos, 6 rolls of expired color film, and tons of digital images! In addition, we're meeting up with another of our photographer friends from school to explore both Bremerton and Seattle and do some street shooting. And when I get back, I've got 2 more senior shoots in the books!

I can't wait to begin creating some new content for you guys, and I'm excited for the adventure in store for both my immediate future and beyond that, in my photographic career. I can't say thank you enough to the support I've received in this endeavor over the past 2 years. Photography has become my life, and I can't be happier to live it this way!

Hello, September.

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