[4][7] In tandem with her formal education she studied photography in private with her former classmates Emily Pitchford and Laura Adams Armer, who had recently established their own photographic studio.

[8] In 1902, she set up a studio in San Francisco with fellow photographer Blanche Cummings, and soon they were accepting commissions for portraits and commercial work.

[2] A commentary that year in Camera Craft declared that Hanscom's “forte lies in her ability to combine graceful lines and a somewhat original lighting, with the rendering of texture in drapery and flesh tints in soft, mellow lights that are particularly effective.”[9] Adelaide's first awards in photography were two second prizes, one for the portrait The Latest Novel and the other for the cloud effect A Winter Sunset, at the 1901 Channing Club Exhibition in Berkeley.

[11] At the Third Photographic Salon in San Francisco in 1903 Hanscom exhibited five prints, including the highly acclaimed portrait study of Louise Keeler and her baby entitled Mother and Child.

"[12] This show was also important to Hanscom because it was the first place she would have seen prints by Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen and Gertrude Käsebier, who were the leaders of the pictorial photography movement in New York.

[2] In late 1903, she began working on a series of photographs to illustrate the classic selection of poems, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

The concept of illustrating a literary work with fine art photographs was new at that time, and The Rubaiyat was one of the first American books in this genre.

In a newspaper interview she said decided to illustrate The Rubaiyat because it presented "an expression of the struggle of the human soul after the truth, and against the narrowing influence of the dogmatic religions of our time.

Today, the work is recognized for its lush beauty and because the first edition is thought to be one of the first publications in America depicting male nudity in photographs.

[1] She had to completely start her business and life anew, and since the area where she lived and worked was now mostly uninhabitable she packed her few remaining belongings and moved to Seattle.

The organizers of the Exposition decided to hold a competition for a logo to represent the event, and more than 150 of America's best artists and designers entered the contest.

[20] On 1 January 1908, Hanscom married British mining engineer and ex-Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer Arthur Gerald Leeson.

[21] That same year, her husband Gerald enlisted in the Canadian Army in order to fight in World War I, and he left for Europe with very little notice to his family.

[3] She never resumed her photographic work, and, as one writer noted, "the remaining sixteen years of her life seem to have been a feckless series of wanderings with her children in tow.