A few more from New Orleans…

Anonymous woman in the red dress… I love you.

My partner in crime, Amanda from Bel Momento Photography:

We totally crashed a wedding!  Well, for a few minutes… haha.

New Orleans, I love you!

I was in New Orleans this last week for Imaging USA, and I got a chance to hang out with Aviva, a tanner, double-dutch champion, and long-lost friend from college, who just so happens to be the most incredible warrior princess ever.  I’ve always loved Aviva’s style, and it was amazing to wander around a city this cool with a person this cool and take pictures.

I’m in love with the colors on this building:

We found an old carriage covered in rusted tin pieces and turquoise fabric and awesome little things.  She told me it’s some kind of art installation, and when it’s open, the inside of the carriage is filled with dioramas.  Even though it was closed, it was one of the coolest things to randomly run into on the street – it made me think of the Headless Horseman and gypsies.  I think I was probably making some sort of little girl squealing noises when I saw this :)

Aviva – thanks for being so gloriously awesome.  So glad we got to hang out!

. comments .

Lindsay Spaulding January 23rd, 2012

hi molly! these pictures are amazing and so is your friend:)!!! you really seemed to campture the New Orleans that I picture in my head. I really need to get down there asap! Can’t wait to talk about your adventure!

brynn January 27th, 2012

missed meeting aviva, passed the carriage daily, so we should return together

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This time last year, I was hanging out with my family in Costa Rica.  Here’s a little video I made from our trip!

Costa Rica from Cedar House Cinema on Vimeo.

. comments .

b.rab January 8th, 2012

you’re great : )

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I was out to dinner with my parents for my birthday in March, when my mom got a call from my grandfather, saying he was engaged.

“And, of course,” he told my mom, “Molly will shoot the wedding.”

I was definitely a little mind-blown.  This wasn’t exactly something I thought I would do in my lifetime.

“Of course I will,” I told her, still kind of shocked.

Over the next few weeks, his wedding was on my mind a lot.  My grandfather has meant so much to me – he’s an amazing, successful businessperson, and he’s taken me seriously and stood behind me 100% since starting my own business.  When he was in his 20′s and 30′s, he was very interested in photography, and collected several cameras, which he gave to me when I was starting to get into photography in high school.  He showed me the photos he had taken while on his honeymoon with my grandmother in Acapulco back in the day, which he later sold as postcards in some of the shops nearby for spending money.

I always thought of those cameras as fun relics, novelties that look nice on the shelf…. and they sat on my shelves forever.  They were all caked in dust, the lenses clouded over with age.  As soon I realized I’d be shooting his wedding (!), I started thinking about those cameras.  I dusted them off,  swabbed out the crevices with Q-tips, and ran some test film through two of them: the Argus and the Ciro-flex.  Surprisingly, both of them worked (mostly).  So, obviously I was going to use my grandpa’s old cameras to shoot his wedding.

This was so different from the weddings I normally shoot, and it really made me look at weddings, and my job, in a completely different light.  It wasn’t about the trends, or the details – it was a day spent with family, celebrating the people closest to us.  We didn’t have really any time at all set aside for photos, and Jackie was surprised to hear that she might get several hundred pictures from the day.  I learned that church regulations prohibited me from using flash indoors, or stepping on the carpet, or moving around during the ceremony, even if I stayed behind the guests.  Or wearing anything other than all solid black, otherwise I WOULD BE KICKED OUT.  So pretty much, I went into this wedding rethinking my entire style and approaching the day completely differently.  This, in and of itself, was honestly such an amazing experience for me.   A few days earlier, my grandfather went in for some tests, because his doctors were concerned he might have liver cancer.  Needless to say, all of us were pretty emotionally overwhelmed, in so many ways.  This day was so sweet and very raw, and I got to share it with my amazing family.  I’m lucky to be so close to all of them.

Shooting this wedding changed me.

The rehearsal (and location of the reception), the LA Country Club:

One from the Ciro-Flex:

Fair warning: if you’re not in the mood to see me & my siblings making a lot of stupid faces, you can probably stop now.  That’s just what we do.

My little bro & his girlfriend:

Checking out the gorgeous sunset:

My youngest bro:

And now, the wedding day:

My sweetheart grandfather:

My wonderful, sweet parents:

My grandpa is the COOLEST.  These next few are AWESOME!

Then me & my seester & my cousin get tired of being fancy, and head to the bathroom of this church on Rodeo Drive, where the reeeallly classy shots happen:

Beret & Jaime were the “greeters”.  This was an official title, which was kind of funny to us, because the vast majority of the 30 or so guests were family, and about half of those were in the wedding party. However, they took their job quite seriously, and greeted every.single.person. with… enthusiasm.

Two shots from the Argus:

Another Argus shot.

One from the Ciro-Flex.

The LACC:

The decorations were so classic and elegant:

My sweet grandpa with the Ciro-Flex:

Phew.  I don’t know what else to say.  I love you all.

. comments .

Larkin November 6th, 2011

You made me cry, how pure and sweet this was……XO

Heather Barron November 6th, 2011

Just precious, Molly! What a gift to your grandfather and to YOU! :)

zach November 6th, 2011

Amazing. Loved every one of them. They capture your family perfectly.

boo boo November 7th, 2011

yaaaaaaaay!!!! phew. hearts.

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I was a freshman in college, and we had all just moved into the dorms a few weeks earlier. It was early in the morning (for college students, okay) and I was in that hazy pre-awake state, not entirely listening in on my roommate’s phone call.  I could hear her start to cry, but we didn’t know each other very well yet, and I figured it was a personal conversation, so I tried to go back to sleep.  Then she said, “…and they’re bombing the Pentagon?!?”

I sat straight up in bed.  Our eyes met.  She was terrified. As she tried to finish up her conversation so she could fill me in, I could hear the helicopters out our window – five, ten, fifteen – I don’t remember how many I saw, but they hovered over the city like flies.  It took me a moment to remember that I was looking out my dorm room window at Cheyenne Mountain, home of Norad.

“A plane crashed into the Twin Towers in New York,” Cassie told me.  “They don’t think it’s an accident.  Something’s happening at the Pentagon, too.  I think it’s being bombed, or… I don’t know.  I don’t know what’s happening.”  We scrambled to find a TV, and found ourselves huddled around the big one in the student lounge.  I went to Colorado College, which is largely made up of kids from the East Coast, and it was absolute chaos – it seemed like everyone’s parents worked at the Pentagon, or in New York City, or for some branch of the government, and people were  crying, trying to get through to their parents, grilling each other about what we had heard.  I think the scariest part, then, was the not knowing.  Were we at war?  Were we being invaded?  Were there going to be tanks crashing down the streets in an hour?

Cassie and I could only watch so much news before we got antsy.  Anything could happen now, clearly, and we had to be prepared.  We were so fed up with not being able to DO SOMETHING that we rounded up some random people from the dorm hallways and went to the hospital to donate blood – we figured that there could easily be riots, or mass hysteria, or more plane crashes or something, and maybe blood would be needed in the near future.  A bunch of us piled into my Dodge Neon and we drove to the hospital, barely even introducing ourselves.  When we got there, the waiting room was packed – apparently other people had the same idea, too.  We filled out our paperwork, still glued to the news that was playing from every TV in the hospital.  One by one, we went through the screening and started to donate blood.  When they got to me, I was informed that there was a minimum weight requirement and I was something like a pound or two under.

“You have GOT to be kidding me,” I muttered.  The nurse shook her head.  “Dammit,”  I said.  “Just… hold on.”

“I have to borrow your Nalgene,” I said to someone from the dorms who had ridden with us – I don’t even remember who – and I stood by the water fountain and drank Nalegenes full of water and making the nurse re-weigh me until she let me in.  The ride back, and the rest of the day, was a blur of panic and rumors and 24 hour news, but over the next few days and weeks, us hospital kids kept seeing each other around campus.  Little did I know, then, that those people would end up becoming some of my closest friends through college- most recently, my friend Davin, who now lives in Argentina, was in the States and was able to stop by for my studio re-opening a few months ago.

9/11 means something different to all of us.  For me, it’s a reminder that life as we know it can change in a split second.  It’s also a reminder that the response that I saw to this tragedy (ideology, politics, and religion aside), the individual person-to-person response,  was overwhelmingly positive.  Strangers wanted to take care of each other; people who had never met opened up to each other; and I met some of my best friends because of those positive responses.  I hope 9/11 will serve as a reminder to let our humanity continue to shine through in the face of tragedy.

What’s your 9/11 story?

(Me and Cassie, my roommate for two years)