Dean Mitchell is a producer of photographic stock images – producing thousands of stunning images to over fifteen microstock and traditional stock libraries around the world. Our standards are some of the highest found in the industry. We use the best photographic equipment on the market and put our image through rigorous processes to achieve the final result. Some of our clients include Virgin media, the liberal democrats, the National Health Service, The Sun newspaper, The Daily Mail newspaper and the Daily Telegraph newspaper to name but a few. Deans work is represented by all the major players in the microstock Industry such as Istock, shutterstock, fotolia, dreamstime, crestock, 123rf, veer, canstock and bigstock. More recently Dean has ventured into the traditional and world leading stock library – Getty Images. To commission Dean’s work follow the links to the right.

But who is Dean?

This is the part where I’m supposed to pretend someone else is writing great things about me and how I’m the best thing slice bread. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anyone willing to lie for me so I’ll do my best to ‘NOT’ blow my own trumpet – so to speak.

I’m a professional stock photographer and have been for eighteen months mainly producing images for the microstock libraries. This is a relatively new area of photography for me as I have been working as a professional photographer since 1998. I began when I left school nearly twenty years ago now – my word I’m sure that is a miscalculation – when I began a City and Guilds Diploma in Photography. Now this was the first year of such a Diploma in the UK and well, lets say, it wasn’t as successful as it should have been. I was a typical poor sixteen year old that needed cash to survive and continuing my education was a depressing thought for me back then so I opted out of education when the coarse finished and ventured into fulltime employment.

Wouldn’t it be nice to hear a story of how I became a microstock photographer, that went something like this: Even though I’d left school early I never fell out of love with photography and I always carried the camera my grandfather gave me as a boy that had been given to him by his grandfather and how I built up my skills from snapping the everyday depressing life experiences I encountered until ‘Charles Saatchi’ discovered me selling my work on the streets of London for a couple of bob (old English money – so I’m told) just so I could feed myself and my only friend – a field mouse that lived in my pocket – just to survive another day . The mythical Saatchi was so taken back by my courage he decided to present me to the world and today I swim in cash and blow my nose on $100 bills………. Well, even though that all did really happen, in a dream, I couldn’t give you that story! I never really took another pictures until I was twenty-one.

Now I love my country, especially our great skills in Cricket and how frequent we win the world cup (soccer for you that know nothing of the beautiful game), but I just needed to get out of the rat race and grey bubble I called home and see the big wide world for myself. So In short, what I did was stow away on a big ship where I met this beautiful woman that always wore a big diamond around her necks. We would stand on the bow of the ship with the wind in our hair everyday until one night we hit a huge Iceberg…………. ok ok I’m making it up. I was just trying to make things sound alittle more dramatic and exciting. Again that all did happen in a dream I had however, but what I really did was embark as a ‘cruise ship photographer’. For those of you that have been lucky enough to go on a cruise will say, oah photographers, the parasites of cruises. Well, I’ll defend the cruise ship photographer in a minute but for me I felt like Leonardo in my exaggerated story stepping foot on the biggest floating hotel I had ever seen, and I also felt like a pauper amongst princess like his character did in the movie. It didn’t take long to get into the life on the ocean waves though. Infact I loved it and spent the next six years of my life working as a ‘parasite’ of the cruise ships. Now this is a harsh label that admittedly I have given to myself and other cruise ship photographers as I have never heard anyone refer to them as ‘Parasites’ but it is known that they are not the most popular of the crew on the big liners. I could go into it as for why but I won’t bore you with the detail but what I will say is I’ve never worked so hard in my life and eighteen hour days where the norm – the rowing was the hardest part though, gave me terrible blisters. In the defence of the Cruise ship photog, they push their service because they are the only people working on cruises that earn commission only – you reap what you sow – so they do a lot of sowing. My point is – before I venture off it even more – that I began picking up the skills that I now use in my microstock shoots when I worked in the cruising industry.

The photography was pretty repetitive and not too challenging though. I say that now, but then I was learning and I couldn’t think of any faster way for me to pick up the basics. For some, revising and sitting exams is a great way to understand the basics of photography but with-a-hands on approach I learnt more from a few months of being a cruise ship photographer then I did in a year in college.

Now I had the basics under my belt I took every opportunity to build up my travel portfolio. I’d been given a free ticket to see the world and whenever the opportunity arose I went out with the camera and took travel shots. In those days digital photography was just some crazy idea in some mad scientists head (you know what I mean) so I was shooting all my work on transparency film. My digital days began when I returned from a year travelling around Australian. When my cruising came to an end and before I rejoined the sixtytwo million rats running the race back home I thought I’d go to the one country that really took my fancy during my worldly travels – Australia. Now this is some big country and takes some covering. I’d got a few quid in my pocket now after rowing that big cruise liner to over fifty different countries so I thought I’d blow the lot on a yute (Auzzie accent needed) and drive all the away round this hot dusty country. Well not quite a yute, it was quit a nice mobile home that was ideal for travelling the twentyseven thousand miles I put it through and comfortable enough to live in during that time. I got some great shots and furthered my skills with the camera in the process.

That was back in 2003. When I returned In 2004 I took one last stint on the cruise ships in Scandinavia. I’m glad I did as I met the love of life Minna. She decided to give up the cold snowy winters and beautiful warm summers of Sweden for rainy winters and wet summers of England and set up home with me here in Bridgnorth, Shropshire. Now I forgot to mention earlier from the time I failed miserably on my college deploma until I returned from my last contract as a cruise ship photographer, I had kept in touch with a successful commercial photography company where I had done voluntary work on numerous occasions back in my home town. Between college courses, various jobs and cruise ship contracts I turned up at their door time and time again begging on bended knee for a job. It took fourteen years to break them down but break them down I did. Well not really their assistant (probably the longest serving assisting in the world) had moved on after fourteen years in the position and I happened to knock on the door at the perfect time. This was life changing for me as the next four and a half years where a master class in photography and my skills moved on in leaps and bounds – especially in studio lighting. Their portfolio of clients was vast and impressive. I worked with the famous advertising agency McCann Erickson and worked on a £300,000 campaign for Harley Davidson amongst numerous other top end commissions.

After four and a half years I wanted to put my newfound skills into practice so I set out to become one of the top selling stock photographers in the industry – watch this space………………………………