This month we welcome documentary photographer Dawn Blomquist.  We learned about Dawn through her website and blog, where, among other things, she writes about the challenges and joys of raising a teenager with ADHD.  Dawn lives in the Pacific Northwest in Washington State.  You can learn more about her and see her work at dawn-blomquistphotography.squarespace.com.

I am a documentary photographer; I shoot with 35mm film on my Canon Elan 7E SLR.  I live in Washington State with my family and our two dogs, Sophie Grace and Atlas.  I have been a photographer for over eight years; I’ve been shooting with 35mm film for over three years.

I’m the mom to a teenage boy; he and the dogs are my muses. I write about him a lot in blog posts on my website.  The majority of the photos I take are of them.  I also love to shoot street, landscape, and still life for myself.  I love photography; I love film like crazy.  There’s just something about film that cannot be emulated with presets that look like film.  The grain, the mistakes, etc., are all beautiful to me.

In the past few years, I’ve gravitated more towards environmental portraits because I do have a teenager.  All of the photos are of him in his environment where he is the most comfortable; there’s no posing, no guiding, just him doing homework, relaxing, or doing whatever he happens to be doing at the time I take the photo.  He inspires me; without him as my muse, my inspiration, I doubt that I would be the photographer that I am today.

Do you want to Be Our Guest?  Leave us a comment below with a link to your blog, Instagram account, or other place you post your images.  You can also add a hashtag to your IG images: #viewfindersio_beourguest.

See you soon.

xo lucy