catwalks and tweets

Decided it's been a while since I wrote, and there's been movements afoot, so at least I've got a decent reason to write something.

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine asked me if I was interested in photographing a fashion show. My response was of course, yes. It was the Edinburgh Charity Fashion Show, which is billed as Europe's most successful student-run fashion show. Which is pretty good.

The premise for my photography was to produce some shots which would show a mixture of fashion and documentary style photographs, behind the scenes and on stage.

The show itself was held at Edinburgh Corn Exchange. The first night was student night, and so was pretty relaxed with student friends turning up. That said, it sold out all 900 tickets. The clothes were donated by a range of well known local, national, and international designers. The show was organised by students from Edinburgh College of Art and Edinburgh University. The second night was a black tie affair, with tables laid out for dinner, an auction and a silent auction, and of course a celebrity supporter in tow. I learned a lot from the experience, about working a situation like this. Had I been working purely from a press-photography perspective, I'd have produced a range of shots from one end of the catwalk which all looked identical. As it was, I wanted to get more "creative", and so worked around different angles. I felt that given this could produce portfolio work (an attitude I take to every shoot of late) I wanted it to at least look interesting. I really enjoyed it, and got some great networking opportunities, which is always a plus. I think my confidence is growing in that regard, which is quite nice to be aware of.

I've also been trying to shoot the album cover, but so far, no luck. I'm waiting for a spot of good weather - a nice evening. Believe it or not, those aren't as frequent as you'd think even now. The other thing is, there is time constraints working against me on this, so as is the way, the best days are the ones when my subject isn't available for shooting. I'm considering just going into the studio and doing something there instead.

I've also had my first stab at some architectural photography. I'm due to go for "round two" sometime soon, again, I'm wanting some good weather to show a bit of sunshine in the photographs. Until then, the photos remain under wraps.

I've also got my big final end of year project at the moment. I've got a series of shoots lined up for next week, so we shall see how they turn out. In addition, I've found myself inundated with make up artists looking for a photographer.... which keeps me busy.

Finally, I've managed to get myself a website set up! Quite pleased about this, because I've managed to meet my own timescale on this, which was to have it up and running by the start of April. It can be visited here: http://kristinmitchell.co.uk/ I decided to work with white, for a number of reasons. Firstly, I think it's more reflective of how a photo might be displayed, e.g. on a wall. Secondly, I think black is much more common as a choice of photo website colour, and I like to go the other way. Thirdly, I personally find black backgrounds difficult to read text on - white text is fine, but when it's blue or red, it's a bit harder for me to focus properly, so I thought other people might feel the same way. Finally, it's less "look! I'm looking at a photo website!", which if you're sitting in an office for example, you might not really want something that grabs the attention of everyone in the room for all the wrong reasons towards your monitor. I wanted something that lets people look at my site discretely. I've also decided to stay away from talking about myself in the third person on my site. Partly to do with the fact that every time I read that by other photographers, I get Alan Partridge's voice in my head. I very much doubt they have a raving fan of a webmaster who wants to spout well-versed cliches about the genius of the photographer in question. So I'm trying to make it more "this is me, this is what I can do for you". Whether it works or not...

I'm also working on how I'm going to market myself a bit, and trying to work out what goes on inside the heads of other people. A dangerous task, I realise. So I'm currently working on a short(ish) survey, trying to get a feel for how people think about professional photographers, hiring photographers, studios, costs, ranges, how people source photographers for occasions, and so on. I think it's better to create a product that way than to try and copy what everyone else is doing and wait for people to go for that. So if you're interested in taking part.... email me at kristinmitchellphotos at googlemail dot com and I'll add you to my survey mailing list. While I'm going to be targetting people closer to where I live, I think people's perceptions of photography isn't necessarily driven by their geographical location, so I'm happy to take responses from people from different areas too, as well as a variety of demographic groups.

Meantime, you can keep up to date with me on a more regular basis via twitter which I have succumbed and joined.