How High Can You Fly?

When I was seven I appeared in a shoes advert.

I was sitting on a swing. Behind me, a painted backdrop of clouds. My father tilted the camera just enough and suddenly I wasn't in a studio in Sussex anymore. I was swinging through the sky in a pair of the most beautiful red shoes.

My friends at school saw it and wanted to know how I got so high in the sky!

I don't have a copy of it now. Both my parents are gone and I can't ask them. But I remember the red shoes. And I remember my friends asking how I got so high.

That's the thing about a great image. Nobody sees the painted backdrop. Nobody sees the tilted camera, the craft, the years of knowing behind it. They just see a little girl flying high on a swing.

My father was an advertising photographer. He printed for David Bailey early in his career and I still have his first edition of Goodbye Baby and Amen, some of which were printed by him. Later he shot for Schweppes. You might remember the image, a bottle with the cap flying off, liquid frozen in mid-air. That was him. Stopping time for a living.

I found another photograph from his time at the studio. A black and white polaroid test shot from my family archive. I'm sitting on a sofa next to my parents, my mother looking distinctly unimpressed, my father looking very pleased with himself. We're on a set he was shooting that day. Essentially a fake living room, complete with a photograph of my mother and a random man stuck onto the television screen. We were all drafted in at some point!

On set! A glimpse into my childhood… daughter of creatives.

Here's the thing though. None of what he did for a living was fake. The Schweppes bottle really did contain something worth drinking. The red shoes really were beautiful. He knew how to show things in the light they deserved. He, like the industry he worked in understood that a great product, poorly presented gets ignored. And a great product, shown with skill and intention, gets remembered.

That's not deception. That's craft.

What we once called advertising and what we now call marketing are really the same impulse. Telling your story in the best possible light, to the right people, at the right moment. The tools have changed. The craft hasn't. It's still about knowing how to tilt the camera.

I didn't follow my father behind the lens professionally. But I never stopped understanding what it means to make something visible. I went sideways into picture desks, national newspapers, magazines, years spent choosing and handling images from the other side of the lens. Then graphic design. Then Jaggerdesign. I didn't really plan any of it. At one point I didn't even know photo libraries existed. I just phoned one up and asked for a job. That's mostly how I've navigated things. Instinct, curiosity, a willingness to just start.

What I've learned after years of working with small business owners is this.

You have no idea how much more you know about your craft than other people do. The gap between what you know about your work and what your ideal client knows is enormous. You have something genuinely worth finding. But if they can't see you, they don't know you exist. And so they don't know they need you.

Most creative people and small business owners didn't start their work in order to become marketing experts. Neither did I. But marketing, at its best, is just storytelling. It's knowing which light to stand in. It's understanding that your website, your words, your presence online -these are your painted backdrop. They don't need to be false. They just need to show your work as clearly and as honestly as it deserves to be shown.

That's a skill. And like any skill, it can be learned.

For those who aren't yet in a position to hand it to someone else, who know they need to be more visible but aren't sure where to start, I've built something simple and seasonal that works through it with you, one small step at a time. No overwhelm. No jargon. Just a clear, consistent path to being found by the people who need you.

Because your work deserves to be seen.

If this resonates and you'd like to know more before I open it fully, just send me a message. I'm looking for a small founding group to start with. Prices will tier between a one off £19, or £9 a month to £19 a month. More details to follow. You can choose between no support, jut the PDF, or a monthly guide and group access, or add on a monthly group zoom for tier 3.