Video: Aussie surf photographer Trent Mitchell

We've long admired the work of Australian surf photographer Trent Mitchell, and this new video produced by the team behind the Gold Coast's annual surf film and photography festival Flotsam is a great insight into his work and ethos.

Mitchell has been a photographer for more than 20 years, working in both digital and film. He is a previous winner of the Moran Contemporary Photographic Prize in 2015, and published a fantastic book, Australian Lustre, last year.

Mitchell's journey is probably similar to many photographers - he first started with photographing his friends with an underwater camera, before picking up the camera again to capture process shots of artworks he was making for his studies. 

However it wasn't until he was a few years out of school, while doing design work, that he realised photography was the perfect skill to add to what he was already doing.

Today, he pursues both personal and paid work, and finds paid work has resulted from his personal work as well.

"You can work personal work into your job as well," he says. "They're not these separate things."

Cover image: Trent Mitchell/courtesy of Flotsam festival