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In this post I'm going to talk to you about one of the inspirations for my final work. Now I don't think I'll be able to create anything quite as magnificent as what Kirsty Mitchell has created but one can only hope.

Kirsty Mitchell was born and raised in Kent, England. She grew up surrounded by stories told by a mother who brought them to life.

"She instilled in me the most precious gift a mother could, her imagination and a belief in beauty, it became my root, and the place I constantly try to return to in my work, and my dreams"

Kirsty studied the history of art, photography, fine art and costume for performance. She then furthered her education by returning to University and completing a first class degree with honours in fashion design. She's completed internships at the design studios of Alexander McQueen and Hussein Chalayan. She's also worked full time as a senior designer for an international fashion label. She continued on this path until a sudden illness brought a change within her life which led it to pick up a camera.

"I had never truly 'looked' until it was through a lens"

Personal tragedy struck in the form of her losing her mother and this is when Kirsty really immersed herself into photography to help deal with her grief. This really was the start of a photography career.

One of the projects of Kirsty's that really drew me in was her project 'Wonderland'. This began just seven months after mother's death and was a five year project. What started as a distraction from her reality lead to a huge turning point within her career. For this project she drew on the memories of her mother reading to her and on the fact that mum was an English teacher who spent over 30 years inspiring children with stories and plays. Kirsty says her mum was rarely seen without a booking a hand or write in her diaries. Kirsty decided she wanted to create a storybook without words dedicated to her mum that would have fragments of fairy tales that her mum had read to her.

You can watch in this video of a behind the scenes of one of the images in the series.

Now I'm never going to have a team as big as what she had, and I don't have access to beautifully made dresses or backdrops, nor do I have the talent to make either of those things. But for me 'Mythos' is a starting point. I'm not gonna finish this book at uni, not during my degree at least, but this is a starting point that could lead somewhere magnificent. One thing I can really pull from Kirsty's work is her use of props. It's so obvious that she knows the story well or what she's trying to tell and for me I need to know the myths well enough to draw on props or symbolism within my shoots. There's so much detail that goes into her work, so much thought. I feel I've spent a great deal of time contemplating the shoot, hopefully enough to pull it off.