Styling Leeds Weekend Job

'I work for Canvas8, a leading UK insights service for some of the world's top agencies and brands including Channel 4 and Mother London. We're recruiting for street-fashion photographers, as a Saturday or Sunday job, to take shots for our online community Styling Leeds. We piloted the project last year and had a brilliant response and more recently the kind folk at Trinity Leeds have agreed to financially back the venture. We are currently looking to expand our photographers' team further. It's a fantastic job for students to get involved with, and a super bit of experience that'll look good on CVs or as part of a portfolio. The work is exciting, relevant and straightforward and only requires a couple of hours on weekends.

I decided to apply for the Styling Leeds job after receiving this email on my Uni email address. I found the Styling Leeds Facebook page and that convinced me to apply, as I liked the photographs and the outfits people had on so much!

I like the idea of walking around town spying people with lovely outfits and approaching them to take their photo. In the past I would have thought I'd feel too silly doing this, however its something I've recently got used to through doing documentary style photos for other projects, therefore I see it as something I could enjoy. I emailed saying I'm interested in the job, and got a reply saying they liked my work, so I'm waiting to see what they say.

Book Cover Photograph

A few months ago, after realising I hadn't visited or updated my Flickr page in a while, I decided to log in and read some of my comments/messages. I had a message from Sonia Chaghatzbanian, an art director for Simon & Schuster (a New York publishing company), saying she was interested in one of my photographs to be used on a book cover:

This is the image she was interested in:

Its an old photo (February 2009!) that I had taken during my 365 Self Portrait a Day project. I remember taking it at about 8am in the morning in my snowy street at home, before I went out to school. It was definitely an exciting surprise to see in my Flickr messages after not logging in for a while.
After replying back, a few emails and months later, I've now signed the contracts to allow them to use my photo. I've been sent a mock up of what the book cover will look like, it has been cropped into a portrait format to suit a book cover, snowflakes drawn above my head (which I love) and the book title/author added on:

The book is set to be published in Spring 2013, I will receive a credit in the book for the photo, and will be sent a copy of the finished book, which I'll definitely be reading. This was an awesome and unexpected opportunity, especially to gain a potentially useful contact - I have said that I'd be interested in working on any book covers they may need in the future.

PaperGirl Leeds

A few weeks ago I received an email through my uni email address about an exhibition called PaperGirl Leeds. It is a project set up by Laura Jordan, a third year Visual Communication student, which aims to promote "The art of giving art". The email was an open call for all artists, and asked for prints of any work; 'prints and illustrations, mixed media and photographers' 'whatever it is you love to do!'. The prints will be shown in an exhibition in April, and after the exhibition is over all the prints are taken down, rolled up and distributed to the public by people on bikes.
Being a lover of bikes (especially cute ones with baskets!) this project appealed to me as not only a good opportunity to show my work, but also to support a unique project which I liked the idea behind!

The deadline for submissions was 1st April (which was later extended to 20th) which came at a busy time for me with various deadlines looming. Therefore I decided to submit some images I had taken a while ago, from a resolved project. I thought this would make a stronger series as the project was completed, and they are also still some of my favourite images I have taken:

I printed each image on A3 satin paper, I wanted a thin paper that would roll up easily for when it gets handed out. On the back of each print I wrote a message to whoever may receive it:

'Photograph by Katherine Mitchell

Photography Student at Leeds College of Art

If you'd like to see more of my work please visit (my Flickr URL)

Hope you like this print!'

I want to visit the exhibition when it shown, and I'm also tempted to hang around town the day they get handed out to see if I spot any of the action! I'd also be interested to see if I received any messages or extra views on my Flickr page from anyone who got the print. 

It was a fun experience to be involved in such an unusual project, and nice to work on some personal work at an extremely busy time.