MICHELLE M. MITCHELL

Wherever Michelle Mitchell goes, camera in hand, she turns ordinary scenes into magical moments. Editors praise her stylish layouts, and new brides treasure her subtle presence as she documents their nuptials.

“My specialty is capturing personalities,” Mitchell says, “grabbing those in-between moments that evoke an emotion and not just a memory. I move around a lot and try to get as many shots as I can without being in everyone’s face.”

Before the ceremony, Mitchell advises couples to help her prioritize by listing the specific shots and family members that they absolutely want. She also encourages them to allow plenty of time during the wedding for pictures of the bride and groom, portraits that often get short shrift amid the day’s excitement.

For nearly five years, Mitchell has channeled her creative energy into photography, and though she often uses black and white film for personal “hobby” shots, she opts for digital when shooting weddings and commercial work.

“They’re both so different,” she says. “With digital you get a quick turn-around time, but to take a film photo, wait to get it back and get excited about it, there’s an element of mystery about that.

“In my opinion,” she adds, “if you have the right equipment and know how to process images in Photoshop, you can get the same quality image from both film and digital.”

Born in Goleta but raised in the Santa Ynez Valley, Mitchell traveled to New York after high school to pursue a career in fashion design. She worked for a fashion designer but found something lacking in the finished product.

“The final outcome—on the sales floor and runway—turned me off,” she admits. “I was more interested in the artistic aspect, so I went to San Francisco to study photography.

“Through high school and after,” Mitchell explains, “my mom did photography and I learned a lot about being creative and how you can make the world look different with one picture. It was a perfect medium for me and I fell in love with it.”

Mitchell studied at San Francisco’s Academy of Art University to complete her B.A. in Photography with an emphasis on advertising and illustration.

Since then, she has worked alongside celebrity photographer Michael Grecco, as a freelance event photographer for TheAList.org and San Francisco Weekly, and she is now featured on the popular wedding site snippetandink.blogspot.com

Mitchell recently returned to the Santa Ynez Valley and launched Michelle M. Mitchell Photography, a business that specializes in weddings and commercial work.

“It feels good to be back,” she says. “In high school, I didn’t care for the Valley, but after living in New York, I have a real appreciation for it.

“It’s a small town,” she continues, “and the weather is nice. People are friendly, they have time to stop and talk, and they’re willing to help each other out.”

Newly engaged, Mitchell sees marriage and children in her near future, and hopefully, a strong wedding business, with plenty of editorial work to feed her artistic side.

“I don’t know what it is yet,” she adds, “but ten years from now I want to work on something important, do a project to help a cause or raise awareness, because I feel like photography is not only creative but a really powerful medium.”

Professional photographer Michelle Mitchell, above, left a fashion design career to study photography. These days she’s seldom without a camera. Below, Mitchell in New York City’s Central Park in 2003, far from the Santa Ynez Valley where she grew up.