I came across the work of Kirsty Mitchell via flickr a few years ago. It was her 'Lavender Princess' image (above) that I first saw and I was immediately hooked. I'd never seen anything like it and I was smitten...head over heels in love in fact! It's actually hard for me to articulate how Kirsty's work makes me feel but needless to say she transports me to a magical world with every image that I'm lucky enough to see.If possible, Kirsty's story is even more moving than her incredible images. Get ready to be inspired...Hi Kirsty, can you tell us your story - how you started in photography and a little bit about your journey from then till now?I studied analog photography many years ago when I was 18 at art school, but this was before digital became mainstream. It was my first contact with the medium, and sadly I felt defeated and frustrated by my tutor's focus on the technical processes rather than creative expression. I saw photography as an art form not a science, and so in the end I followed a career into fashion design instead. It was another 13 years until I picked up a camera again in the summer of 2007. I was in the process of recovering from 4 months of chronic insomnia brought on by posttraumatic stress. The drugs I had been prescribed, had numbed my senses to the point where I had pretty much lost all awareness of touch, temperature and interest in the lives of the people around me, I was a zombie. I was undergoing hypnotherapy and slowly things began to return, but my sensitivity came back at an almost heightened state. It’s hard to describe without it sounding like a cliché, but it was like I was seeing the world for the first time, and I had an overwhelming urge to record everything around me.