For a more than a year I’ve been thinking about video. Some of my favourite visuals and stills come from videos. It’s such a beautiful medium when it’s used well, it can be so evocative and transportive. Chanel, Chloe and Dior use it to create magical moments, that are aspirational, modern day mini fairytales. Although I could never hope to create the magic Baz Luhrmann or Tim Walker are hired for, I aim to make some little moving moments, that like my stills, I hope you will find intriguing and original. Without huge production budgets I think narrative videos can be difficult to pull off. I hope these little flickers avoid this. I have chosen to stick with pure visuals, which are the bedrock of this site. In this way, I hope video will grow on the site in an authentic way that is unique to me and this platform. I spent a lot of time thinking about how video should look on the site. I have never liked the disjointed vimeo-youtube look of embedded videos. So after much thought and research, design meetings and many hours work by my amazing developer DJ, video now sits effortlessly within the style of my content.

Isolda were kind (or brave) enough to let me try with them first. We have been working together since the beginning of both our careers and I hope we will for many more years. I think, as time passes by (the site just past its 5 year blogiversary) how special the people who supported me and believed in me from the beginning are. Isolda and I took a chance, a leap of faith on each other. I’m so glad we did, and I’m so delighted that they are the first showcase of video on this site. It feels right.

I have been saving images of smoke editorials for years, always waiting for the perfect project to use the idea on. Finally this project happened and I knew this was it. It was so much harder than I could ever of imagined but with the patience and effort of Kit and Vicki, we got there in the end.