The Good Ole Days….
Well this has been a wild ride so far! A little over a month into 2025 and it feels like I am on one long cortisol bender, nervously waiting for the next mental karate chop. Like the fights between Inspector Clouseau and his manservant Cato in the 1970’s movie The Pink Panther, I am constantly poised and ready, arms up, anticipating the next world changing surprise to jump out at me! Suddenly 2024 doesn’t seem so bad, which probably explains why it is the theme of this newsletter, a glimpse into the old world, a cherry picking of my fave shoots I worked on and the people I met, long before it became federal law to use plastic straws again!
Gotta start with the grande dames of all shoots…photographing the stills for the first Barbie global campaign since the multi billion dollar film came out. Working with the dream team from 72 and Sunny we shot a wide range of beautiful kids, mums n dads, creating a diverse, inspiring tear jerker commercial which went on to win an Anthem award.
Founder of Carriage House Births, Domino Kirke Badgley started a new platform for her doulas, a place where they could find support and help. The drawing above is from a larger picture I illustrated showing how, where once doulas felt like they were lost and alone, as if in space, they could now find connection with one another.
It was a lot of fun working with the team at Warby Parker on their new Editions campaign. Traveling between NYC and LA we shot seven super stars who redesigned some classic specs. Artists included actress Natasha Lyonne, NBA superstar Jordan Poole, chef David Chang to name just a few.
One of my personal projects that is a fave is about the people I meet and the stories they tell. Here are a couple of them I met last year.
“A few years ago when I was visiting my dad in Ireland he took me to his friend's house for Sunday lunch. We arrived earlier than the other guests and were ushered into the sitting room for a pre-lunch drink. It was a cozy mismatched room with red walls covered in sun-bleached family photos and old paintings in gold frames. A fire had been lit….” click
“The day I met Stephanie I had pulled up against the edge of the beach not sure if I was going to cocoon in my car or roam. It was a sunny fall day with a sting of winter in the air. Looking over to my right I saw an old car with its trunk up, feet sticking out. Along the interior ran a long orange surf board that peeped over the bottom of the window. I sighed as I pulled on my coat, there are some hello’s you can’t ignore….”.click
What else, what else….
Still in the vein of the good ole days, I found myself going even further back to 2023 and looking at work I did with Air BnB. I loved this shoot! We shot in upstate NY over a long summers weekends, with the loose creative direction to capture an experience, a family reunion, against the backdrop of a big beautiful Air BnB house. From dawn to dusk everyone grew used to waking up with a camera in their face allowing me to capture them eating, sleeping, fighting, fishing, playing and everything in between.
That’s that for now. Thanks for coming all the way down here, I look forward to whatever winding path we may take this year.
As ever, stay childish.
Frances x