Meet Jessie Mazur

A Mountain to Climb

Jessie is a native to Whitefish Montana. She grew up learning how to navigate wilderness terrain from a young age, a hobby she still practices vigorously. In high school she was a cheerleader for the Bulldogs and a speech and debate state champion. She graduated with honors in 2011, voted by her peers "Most Likely to be President."

Jessie didn't pick up a camera until her first year of college at the University of Montana. It was love at first click. The next year she took a year off from her education to practice photography and travel. She worked as a surfing photographer on the north shore of Oahu, photographing surfing legends like Kelly Slater and Jon Jon Florence. She then landed in West Glacier where she worked as a rafting photographer under local business-owner Kathy Sullivan.

After a year of adventures she returned to Missoula, Montana to study Journalism. She spent a month in India through an education program where she learned to report, write and photograph in a foreign country. Her multimedia stories covered the rise of an autorickshaw union, the latest research on air pollution in India's 8th largest city and an illegal bamboo trade on the edge of a tiger reserve in the tiny village of Moharli.

During her time in college she worked as a cops and court reporter for the award wining student paper the Montana Kaimin. Her stories covered the 2012 Missoula rape scandals, the legalization of same-sex marriage in Montana, and the student Adderall market to name a few. She broke a story about Higher One Holding Company fraudulently charging student accounts, triggering a massive class-action lawsuit. She interviewed and photographed figure heads such as Senators John Tester and Ryan Zinke, then Governor Steve Bullock and multi-billionaire Charles Scripps. She was awarded a scholarship which she used to purchase a 5D mark III camera.

In 2015, she moved back to Whitefish where she opened her first photography business, Jessie Mazur Photography. Unfortunately within the first year of starting her business, Jessie fell very, very ill with carbon monoxide poisoning. It took three years to get a diagnosis and an additional year to recover from the illness.

Jessie restarted her business in 2018 under the name Picture Montana. The business grew from a desk in the corner of her living room to a full-time studio now in Whitefish.

Jessie's commercial photography career has taken her down many paths. Her widely diverse decade-long career with commercial photography has resulted in an unmatched professional experience in a wide variety of photography. Her vast array of professional experience has earned her a reputation of being able to shoot in almost any environment from tight kitchens to dark dive bars to backcountry mountain tops in Montana's famously unpredictable weather conditions. Clients include celebrity musicians, political figure heads, pillars of the professional community, nonprofits, chambers of commerce and everyday Montanans.

Through her passion for outdoor living Jessie has curated a large collection of uniquely creative landscapes of Northwest Montana, many of which can be purchased for single use in the Picture Montana website.

Picture Montana worked through the Northwest Montana Real Estate boom, the coronavirus epidemic and the rapid population growth of the Flathead Valley. While Picture Montana has grown and evolved over the years, at times experimenting with project management, design and videography services, our ultimate calling is to provide the highest quality commercial and personal photography quickly and hassle free to businesses, visitors and families of northwest Montana.

Jessie has continued to flex her writing and journalistic muscles, contributing investigate features and photojournalism to publications like Flathead Living and Hagadone Media, personal essays to Go Local Magazine and various contributions to multiple other local publications. She is available for a limited number of paid writing projects per year.

Jessie is an avid backcountry hiker and snowboarder. Most weekends she cannot be found enjoying Montana's backcountry with her family.