I was born and educated in Finland, spent 9 years in London where I worked in an IT job and moved back to Finland at the end of 2006. I spend majority of my spare time with photography, not only behind the camera but constantly trying to find better ways to translate the mood of my subjects into the print itself.
I have been practising photography since the early age of 8 when I got my first camera from my father. Over the years, interest in photography developed to a serious and passionate hobby taking up all my spare time which eventually led me to become freelance photographer. Freelance work has included work for newspapers, local art museum and weddings amongst various other projects. I have also held various photography workshops. I spent all my childhood summers at my grandparents' summer place, surrounded by the beautiful lakes and forests.
Later in my life I spent countless weekends wandering in the wildereness of Finnish forests and swamps. This is why water and trees are prominent elements in my work. The photographs on this web gallery are mainly from various places around the UK and Finland.
Even if I have got strong foundations in film photography and print making, going to digital was fairly demanding learning process, but would have been even more so without the experience gained over 25+ years when I was using film. I find digital media much more versatile than film and it gives me so much more control, which helps to get the final photograph and print more closely to resemble the original idea I had on my mind.
I don’t want to 'tweak' or 'manipulate' images too much in my digital darkroom, just enough to make it look right and get the right feel to it. I mainly do what I would do in the in the traditional dark room such as cropping and getting the tonal balance right etc. That said, it doesn't mean my photographs try to be factual interpretations of a subject. They are my artistic interpretations and reflect my views of a subject. I like to experiment with images sometimes, but I still prefer the “good old traditional photography”. The media and tools may may have changed but the principals are still the same.
Technical quality of the photographs, including the final art prints, plays big role. Therefore, I have spent great deal of time learning digital fine art printing to be able to control the whole process of creating high quality photography art work.