August Spotlight Artist: Emily Marlow of Made by Marlow Co.
Some creative careers begin with a carefully mapped-out plan.
Emily Marlow’s began with a pumpkin patch, a cell phone, a goat maternity shoot, and a willingness to keep following wherever creativity led next.
Today, Emily is the multimedia producer behind Made by Marlow Co., creating photography, video, graphics, and commercial content for clients across industries and across the country. Her work has appeared on social media, television, in print, at major events like New York Fashion Week and CMA Fest, and in the homes of families who will hold onto the moments she documented for years to come.
And now, after being selected by the She Shoots community, Emily is our August Spotlight Artist.
Chosen by the She Shoots Community
Each month, She Shoots selects a group of Spotlight Artist finalists whose work and stories stand out to us.
From there, we hand the decision over to the people who make this community what it is.
Voting opens inside the She Shoots Society, where members have the opportunity to learn more about each finalist, view their work, and cast their vote for the artist they would most like to see receive the month’s full Spotlight feature.
For August, that vote belonged to Emily.
Her range, persistence, creative growth, and unmistakable passion for the work connected with our community—and earned her the title of August Spotlight Artist.
But Emily’s story started long before the cameras, sets, and runway shows.
Before Made by Marlow Co.
Emily grew up around entrepreneurship.
Her family owns Marlow’s Pumpkin Patch, and in 2011, she took over the business’s social media presence. At the time, her creative toolkit was simple: a cell phone and an instinct for making something people would stop and look at.
A few years later, inspiration arrived from an unexpected place.
Emily came across a dog maternity photoshoot online and decided to recreate the concept—with one of her goats.
The photographs were a hit.
So she kept creating.
She photographed holiday cards, birth announcements, and other playful concepts, eventually turning some of those images into cards, stickers, and products she could sell.
What began as content for the family business was quietly becoming something much bigger.
The Moment It Became a Career
Like so many creative stories, Emily’s path shifted dramatically during the pandemic. She lost her job as a restaurant server and used that season to finish her degrees in Agricultural Business and Agricultural Mechanics. Then she started sending emails. Emily reached out to marketing agencies within driving distance, hoping her experience building the pumpkin patch’s online presence might be enough to land an internship and give her a way into a new industry.
One agency answered. Growing Media was not only a marketing agency—it was also a production house. Emily still remembers receiving the email offering her an interview while sitting with a friend. They screamed. And the interview itself only confirmed what she was beginning to suspect.
It was a working interview, taking place during the taping of The SPIEL. Emily walked into a space filled with people moving quickly, cameras being positioned, lights turning on, and an entire production coming to life around her. She remembers thinking one thing: She would do whatever she needed to do to make this the rest of her life.
A few months later, after saving as much as she could—and receiving some help from her grandparents to cover the final amount—Emily purchased her first camera. Then came conferences. Workshops. Hours of practice. Time in the studio. Learning photography. Learning video. Learning graphics. Learning how to show up to a project and confidently deliver. Eventually, the practice became paid work. And Made by Marlow Co. began to grow.
Creating Everywhere
Emily’s portfolio is difficult to place into a single category—and that is exactly the point. Her work has ranged from medical facilities and restaurants to family documentaries, weddings, birth announcements, travel and tourism campaigns, television production, lifestyle imagery, unit stills, and runway photography.
She has photographed New York Fashion Week. She has worked at CMA Fest. She has produced a television episode. She has created images in her own backyard.
Her Spotlight gallery spans years of that evolution, from the second year of her photography journey through the work she creates today. Some photographs feature friends. Some feature clients. Many feature family. Some were made close to home in Illinois. Others were created in New York City.
Together, they tell the story of an artist who has learned she does not need a specific location, production size, or circumstance in order to make something meaningful.
“I’ll forever be grateful for the fact that I can make art anywhere,” Emily says
The Part She Is Most Proud Of
Ask Emily what she is proudest of, and she does not point to a particular job, publication, or event.
She points to the growth.
She has worked intentionally to become stronger at every stage of the process—from preparing shot lists and knowing when a plan needs to change, to becoming faster and more consistent in the editing bay.
There is still more she wants to learn.
That may always be true.
But the difference between where she began and where she stands today is undeniable.
“I’m not where I want to be yet,” she says, “but I’m closer than I was yesterday.”
That mindset has become one of the defining qualities of her career.
Showing the Magic, Hiding the Process
One of the biggest lessons Emily has learned has little to do with camera settings.
It is learning how to make the final experience feel seamless—even when what is happening behind the scenes is anything but. Cameras get blocked during crucial moments. Equipment fails. Footage does not always arrive where it is supposed to. Plans change.
Emily has learned to adapt without allowing every problem to become the client’s problem. Sometimes that means recreating a moment from another angle. Sometimes it means striking up a conversation while someone quietly gets backup equipment ready.
Sometimes it means entering the editing bay and finding a creative way to piece together what is available.
To Emily, professionalism is not simply producing strong work.
It is creating an experience in which the client feels taken care of even when the creative team is solving problems behind the curtain.
“So much of our success is directly tied into the experience that we provide,” she says.
It is a lesson that has shaped the way she approaches both her work and the people trusting her to create it.
Proof That Something Beautiful Can Still Come From Hard Seasons
Creating has also changed the way Emily sees herself. Every new skill and every improvement has given her evidence of her own capability. The archive of her work has become a visual record of what persistence looks like. And during difficult seasons, creativity gives her something else. Proof.
Proof that hard circumstances do not get the final word. “Being able to create also helps me through difficult seasons by giving me proof that something beautiful can still come out of troubled times.”
It is one of those ideas that reaches far beyond photography. Sometimes growth is difficult to see while we are living through it. Then one day we look backward and realize the evidence has been sitting in front of us all along.
The People Behind the Artist
Emily is quick to point out that none of this has happened entirely alone. Her family has been part of the story from the very beginning. Her parents, Tim and Tracy. Her sisters, Erica, Ellie, Elicia, and Emerie. Her grandparents, Dan and Sue, and Mark and Sharon.
Long before Made by Marlow Co. existed, many of them were already being recruited to help pose goats, build sets, transport props, model for practice sessions, and assist with whatever strange creative idea Emily had decided to try next.
Her friends have been there, too—offering encouragement, giving their time, and stepping in front of her camera while she experiments with something new. She also credits Angie Wyatt with providing opportunities and helping give Emily her official start in the industry, and Sharon Wright for countless conversations, cups of coffee, and pieces of advice along the way.
That support system has become especially valuable when the business side of creativity gets difficult.
Why Creative Community Matters
Emily describes creative community as “the antidote to failure.” Not because artists stop failing when they have community. They do not.
But because failure feels very different when you are surrounded by people who understand it. Creative careers come with comparison. Slow seasons. Difficult clients. Imposter syndrome. Moments where walking away sounds easier than trying again.
For Emily, having people who understand those moments can be the difference between getting stuck inside them and moving through them.
Her creative network includes people close enough to step in front of her camera when she needs to experiment and others who may live hours away by car or plane but are still only a phone call away when she needs perspective.
The distance does not matter nearly as much as knowing someone understands.
The Dream Keeps Getting Bigger
Emily has already created work in places that once might have felt impossibly far from that first cell-phone photograph at her family’s pumpkin patch. But she is nowhere near finished. One of her current personal goals is to become a house photographer for a runway show in Paris. It is a dream that feels appropriately ambitious for someone whose career has continually expanded by saying yes to the next challenge.
Her longer-term dream, however, is not only about where her own work takes her. Emily wants to help more women get behind the camera—particularly in video production. Photography has made progress toward becoming more representative, but women remain underrepresented in many areas of videography and production. Emily wants to help change that. Because for her, success is becoming less about simply finding her own place in the industry. It is also about making the path wider for the women coming behind her.
From a Cell Phone to Wherever Comes Next
There is something fitting about the fact that Emily’s career began while creating content for a small family business. At the time, there was no way to know that those images would lead to professional cameras, television sets, fashion runways, commercial productions, or flights across the country.
There was simply an opportunity to make something. So she did. And then she made something else. Again and again. Each new project built another skill. Each unexpected problem taught her how to adapt. Each person who believed in her gave her another reason to keep going.
And somewhere along the way, the creative experiment became a career.
Emily may have photographed some extraordinary places since then, but perhaps the most compelling part of her work is that she still believes art can be created anywhere.
In the backyard. On a runway. Inside a television studio. At a family milestone. Across the country. Or somewhere she has not even imagined yet.
Congratulations to Emily Marlow of Made by Marlow Co., our August Spotlight Artist.
We cannot wait to see where the camera takes her next.
Model Credits: Abby S., Angie Wyatt, Elicia Marlow, Ellie Marlow, Emerie Marlow, Erica Garner, George Styler, Grace Smith, Imani Champagnie, Kernesha J., Lillian Kluck, Mark Marlow, Mason Garner, Muyi A., Ronald Walls, Sharon Marlow, Tim Marlow, Tracy Marlow, Tucker Garner