Mary Jackson Photography

06/11/2026

Of course, bring your dog.

Your four-legged sibling, the one who’s going to wonder where you went next fall.

Every senior I photograph gets a complimentary family session too, so the whole family, dog included, gets in front of the camera.

Tag the senior who would absolutely bring their dog.

06/10/2026

Bring at least four or five outfits to your senior photos. Bring more if you want.

This is the part that makes it yours instead of a quick afternoon somewhere.

The dressy one, the everyday one, the team gear, the one your mom loves, the one you feel the most like yourself in. I help you plan all of them before we ever shoot, so every look has a reason and nothing feels random.

Send this to the Lincoln-Way friend who keeps asking what to bring.

06/09/2026

Yes, you can bring your dog. Your four-legged sibling, the one who’s going to wonder where you went next fall.

Every senior I photograph gets a complimentary family session too, so the whole family, dog included, gets in front of the camera.

Tag the senior who would absolutely bring their dog.

06/07/2026

Some of my favorite photos are the quiet ones. The in-between, where they forget the camera is even there.

Class of 2027, this is the kind of year worth slowing down for.

06/07/2026

I started Mary Jackson Photography four years ago. After I retired from my corporate career. After the world got quiet. After my own daughter asked me to take her senior photos and something clicked that I wasn’t expecting.
Photography had been mine for a long time before that. Something I kept getting better at, quietly, on the side, while I built a career in something else. Taking my daughter’s senior photos was the day it stopped being the thing I did on the side and became the thing I do.

All week I showed you the seniors who made it into Senior Muse. Their pages. Their faces. The version of themselves they got to see in print. I submitted it because I believed in it.

These ones are mine.

For most of my life I was the person behind the camera, happy to stay a little out of frame. This isn’t the first time my work has been published, but it still catches me off guard every time. My work out where people can see it, and me right there with it. Exciting and humbling all at once.

This magazine is that moment, turned around. Someone looked at my work and decided it was worth printing. Or in my words, we mattered.

Here is the part I did not see coming. It feels like the start of something, not the proof of something. A whole new chapter, in full color.

If you spent years getting good at something before you ever let it count, if you have been quietly waiting to step into the thing you love, consider this your nudge. The doubt does not really leave. You just stop letting it make the decisions.

If you have been thinking about your senior’s photos, my door is open.

06/05/2026

The first time I met Chase, was in his home, he knew he wanted senior photos with his instruments.

He showed me his guitar and I could already see it. Black clothes, white background, him and the guitar. We hadn't even scheduled the session yet.

He played in the band at Lincoln-Way East right before he graduated, but this isn't that instrument. This one lives on the roof outside his bedroom window. Not for anyone. Just because.

Senior Muse published this image this quarter. Some sessions you walk in already knowing.

Tag the mom who knows this version of her kid.

06/05/2026

He plays three instruments. We used all of them during his two-day senior photo shoot. We planned it before we started: the instruments, the wardrobe, what every setup would be. So when the days came, we weren’t figuring it out. We were executing. This studio set focused on two of his instruments. The white guitar is the reason he’s in all black. Plain T-shirt, jeans, and the things he’s best at. Then we played: smoke, colored light, an amp, a few backdrops. His family purchased my largest album because these memories were to important.

Senior Muse published the quiet one. Chase on the floor, white background, white guitar. It was one of my favorites from the day, so I was glad that’s the one they picked.

Chase, class of 2026, Lincoln-Way East. The kid who’s more than one thing.

Send this to a 2027 senior who plays an instrument.

06/04/2026

It was a Sunday morning in early September, and there was a marathon about to happen in downtown Chicago. So, we drove in early, before the city really woke up.

Navy Pier at 8AM is usually empty. Not that day. It was full of runners getting their miles in before the race, people from all over the world, moving past us the whole time we were out there.

Olyvia stood by the trees and let them run past her. I edited every single one of them out. Because this story had nothing to do with them. In this frame, it is only her, like the whole morning and location belonged to her.

Before a shoot, we plan everything out together. What she’s wearing, and the exact location she’s going to wear it at. By the time we got downtown, there was nothing left to figure out and nothing for anyone to stress about. She just got to show up and be in it.

For her this was the first twenty minutes of a two-day, multiple location photo session. Her senior year didn’t happen in one morning, so why should her photo session? These are just four photos from her session. Olyvia’s family purchased an album filled with images from her senior sessions. One she’ll keep long after this morning is a memory.

One of these photos was published in Senior Muse magazine this quarter. The editors there see thousands of images and choose only a few. Ours was one of them.

If this is the kind of morning you want for your senior, send it to them. And if you’re the mom already nodding, comment GRAD27 and we can hop on a call. I’ll share how we can work together.

06/03/2026

06/03/2026

Three of my 2026 seniors are in Senior Muse magazine this quarter.

Senior Muse is a quarterly publication for the senior photography industry. Editors who spend their careers looking at this kind of work review thousands of submissions each quarter.

Three of mine were selected.

This week I'm sharing each image and a little story behind it. Stay tuned.

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