Hey there, friend. I’m CHELSEA.
It all started with my grandfather’s film camera.
Who would have thought that the simple act of lending me his most prized possession would set me on a course that led me to where I am now?
More of my story
How it all began
It all began when I was just barely into my teenage years. I discovered film photography at a Bible camp that I attended during the summer near my small Pennsylvania hometown. I can still remember the anxious feeling you get when you take a photo, but won’t know if it actually turned out until the film was developed. The smell of vinegar always brings back memories from my first experience in a dark room, developing film, exposing that photo paper, placing the paper in the developer and watching my images come to life. It’s a magical experience. I came home from camp that year with a new obsession, and one person in particular took notice.
My newfound interest compelled my grandfather to lend me his own film camera, which was the one item he never left home, or attended a family function, without. Little did he know, this one simple gesture would become one of the defining moments of my life.
How we arrived here
Twelve years later from where this story began, I found myself a newlywed, now living in South Carolina, and a graduate with a degree in X-ray that I no longer had a passion for. After some time in prayer, I approached my husband with the idea of starting my own Photography business. He barely let me finish my thought before he gave his stamp of approval, and so Chelsea Mowery Photography was established.
Many things have changed since that day, but one has remained. Photography is in my blood…literally. My grandfather’s film camera has since been passed down to me, and you might sneak a glimpse of its image that is now tattooed on my index finger. And although film photography has long since been replaced with the digital era, I will always remember exactly where it all began. Thanks, Pap.
10+
Years of experience
4
DIFFERENT STATES
1M+
PHOTOS EDITED
100%
loving what i do
Fast Facts
ABOUT ME
Favorite Movie
The Count of Monte Cristo
Favorite BAND
Head & the Heart
Favorite Book
the Bible
Favorite place
Mountains or Beach
Favorite ANIMAL
Dogs and Moose
Favorite FOOD
Hoagies!
Favorite Drink
My morning “Cup of Joe”
Favorite Color
Green
It’s been quite the journey…
A lot has happened since the beginning.
We met on Christian Mingle and were married 10 months later.
I met Jon before dating websites were even popular. We started talking on Christian Mingle in November of 2011, were engaged two months later, and said “I do” to each other on September 22, 2012. Since that day, we haven’t wasted any time with keeping life interesting. We’ve called four different states “home” and have seen most everything else in between. Marriage has been nothing short of the most challenging, exciting, and joy-filled experience of my life, and there is no question whether or not I would ever want to do life with anyone else but him.
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We spent 6 years traveling the US full time in our RV.
In 2016, we had been living in South Carolina for just two years when we got this crazy idea that we could live in a camper and travel the country full time. At this point, the viral popularity of full-time RVing was still in its infancy. We hit the road in January of 2017, but little did we know that it would become more than just a temporary lifestyle change. It would become a way of life for the majority of the next seven years. We spent 2017 traveling and volunteering on small farms across the country in exchange for a free spot to park our RV. Our work on farms brought us to Idaho where we spent our summer, and that’s all it took for us to want to call Idaho our home. We spent three years dividing our time between Idaho summers and South Carolina winters…until finally…
We’re building a life together in Idaho…literally.
We returned to Idaho from our final east coast winter getaway in the spring of 2022. We were committing ourselves as Idahoans, and Jon spent the next year building a house we designed on some mountain property we had purchased a year prior. Although the house was originally meant to be our own, the Lord redirected our path and we ended up landing at a different property closer to town the following spring of 2023. Again, we spent another summer building a smaller house. By the fall of 2023, we had officially cleaned out our 42ft fifth wheel for the last time as we packed our belongings and moved into a tiny 750sqft A-frame. Jon continues his 20+ year career as a builder while I carry on with pursuing photography…and what a beautiful place to be a photographer!
The rest is yet to be written…
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