Today we’d like to introduce you to Molly Lowe-White.
Hi Molly, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I’m Molly Lowe-White, a film photographer based out of the South Bay. I’ve always had an interest in preserving memories. In high school + college, I always carried around a little digital point-and-shoot camera with me to snap pictures of my friends wherever we went…I was never interested in shooting super-posed portraits, but instead just wanted to capture memories in real-time so that I could look back on them down the line.
When my first son was born, I truly became obsessed with documenting the day-to-day life of my little family through images…again I found my eye mainly drawn to capturing the in-between moments in unique ways rather than posed shots. When he was very small, I started shooting 35mm film after picking up a 60-year-old Canon FT from a local estate sale, and I haven’t put it down since.
After sharing my film snaps on my personal Instagram page, I started receiving inquiries from people I knew reaching out to see if I would capture their own families in the same style that I shoot my own, and the idea to start my own photography business just naturally evolved from there.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
So far, so good! I haven’t put too much pressure on things, just really focused on seeing how it naturally evolves. Photography and art are so subjective…I try to remind myself all the time that my style of photography might not be for everyone and that that’s okay! As long as I keep creating in the style that resonates with me, I will continue to draw in clients that my work resonates with as well. It’s been really rewarding to have families I know personally trust me to capture their family memories for them, but also to have families I’ve never met before hiring me because they like my eye.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I am a 35mm film photographer specializing in capturing documentary-style family/childhood moments, and a majority of my shoots are done in-home.
I am drawn to capturing families as they really are rather than posing them in front of a beautiful backdrop and having everyone to smile at the camera at the same time. The details and in-between moments are really important for me to document, even more so than posed portraits, because that’s where I feel the story of a family can really be felt. Twenty years down the road, when the kids in the photos are all grown up, I want my clients to be able to look back at the images we take and be transported back to the feelings + memories they have from their current season of life…I want them to remember their child’s favorite toy that was never far from their side and the look of pure joy on their kid’s faces during a living room dance party, not what a forced smile looked like.
I shoot a single roll of film in my sessions, and there are only 36 exposures per roll, so I’m not taking 100’s photos like I would be able to if I were using a digital camera. Because I only have 36 shots to work with, I’m very intentional about the moments I do choose to snap the shutter on. And there is something to be said about the delayed gratification of not knowing exactly what the images look like in real time – I truly get butterflies in my stomach when I am about to receive a roll of film back after processing because I get so excited to see how everything turned out. My heart always swells up after delivering a client gallery and hearing sweet feedback about what the moments I chose to capture mean to them.
What are your plans for the future?
For the future, I just plan to hopefully continue to connect with more + more families who enjoy my style of photography and maybe expand into also partnering with companies with similar clientele/aesthetics to do some branded content mixed in there as well.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.MollyShootsFilm.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/molly_shoots_film
Image Credits
Molly Lowe-White
