I photograph beauty; I'm old-fashioned that way.
I've always been a strongly visual person: I grew up admiring my mother's water paintings (her website can be found here, and she's on Instagram as @ilonataiteilija), as well as the usual childhood fare of comic books, TV and movies.
While I've been photographing since I was a teenager, I started out "seriously" in 1999 with travel photography, and expanded to portraits and glamour in mid naughties. I've always wanted to photograph pretty ladies, but I'm a shy guy from a small Finnish town, so it took me a while to get comfortable enough behind the camera that I could trust myself to do justice to the models. When I finally did, I got off to an auspicious start: my first portraits got the model into Miss Hong Kong competition – she eventually placed in the top 10.
I've always been a strongly visual person: I grew up admiring my mother's water paintings (her website can be found here, and she's on Instagram as @ilonataiteilija), as well as the usual childhood fare of comic books, TV and movies.
While I've been photographing since I was a teenager, I started out "seriously" in 1999 with travel photography, and expanded to portraits and glamour in mid naughties. I've always wanted to photograph pretty ladies, but I'm a shy guy from a small Finnish town, so it took me a while to get comfortable enough behind the camera that I could trust myself to do justice to the models. When I finally did, I got off to an auspicious start: my first portraits got the model into Miss Hong Kong competition – she eventually placed in the top 10.
Photograph by Leonardo Graterol
The joy I see when I show photographs is a reward in itself, as is the knowledge that someone appreciates my photography enough to display it on a wall in their home. Although I get the warm and fuzzies from pleasing others, I ultimately and always shoot for myself.
