Hey! I’m Jani, an image maker from Tampere.

This site is a portfolio of my selected works

I like to work on certain themes that I call concepts and on the front page there are links to a selection of those that feel important to me currently. I have also shot lot of event photography in documentary style like corporate events, conferences. I’m experienced also in live music photography and more intimate events like weddings and funerals.

I shoot with a variety of cameras both film and digital, from vintage to modern, from point and shoots to DLSRs to medium format. But it’s never about the tool, it’s the user that creates the image. Selection of the tool (and look of the film if shooting analog) just sets a certain constraint for the photographer to work with. Tool is selected from the results it can give and the feelings it can convey.

In the future, I’d like to work with fashion photography and personal portraits, so if you have ideas around these, give me a holla on the contact page! Also collaborations with makeup artists and set designers are interesting.

Brief history of me as a photographer and what lights my fire

I have two great passions in my life, music and visual arts. For visual expression, the camera has always been the most natural medium for me to express myself. There’s something magical in camera’s ability to freeze time and capture fleeting moments we call life.

My first camera was my mother’s old Agfa point-and-shoot, and from the first time I took a picture with it, I was hooked. All the film in the world was not enough for me. Then my father showed me how to work with his Olympus SLR, what’s aperture, shutter speed and the basics.

From then on, I have been mostly self-taught, although there has been many important people in my journey. Like the photographers and copyists in the newspaper Satakunnan Kansa’s photo department where I spent a short internship in the early 90s. There I learned the first steps in the art of film photo development and printing process, the way contrast alters the picture and how to dodge and burn using your bare hands. This was true craftsmanship! There I was also shown the importance of cropping as a tool to focus the viewer to your story. This was in the old school days of analog and film, but the lessons learned then still hold true.

I don’t know if it was the camera that chose me, or vice versa. Anyhow, I find it complements my persona well. As a quite private guy, being behind the camera allows me to distance myself from the world and at the same time participate in it. Having done event photography like music concerts, corporate events and weddings has kind of forced me to grow socially and learn how to survive when out of one’s comfort zone.

I somehow like the torment of being compelled to produce good photos and not having a clue beforehand how to get those! The challenge there is to be present, to keep an eye on your surroundings and most importantly, knowing when to interact with your subject. The Backstage series is a good example of this: I had almost no plans ahead of the shoots, in couple of the photos I had toured the place and spotted some good places for backgrounds. When I was with the artists, there was only a couple of minutes to set up lights and to orchestrate the people, shoot 5-10 frames and then they were gone. It’s psychologically really demanding thing to do and I have a great respect for the photojournalists who do this kind of stuff every day.

Conceptual photography is the one working method that inspires me creatively. A concept for me is a framework that defines some boundaries that I must work with. The boundaries might be physical, like standardizing light setup and shooting every photo from the same angle and focus only on some variables, like the coffee mugs in Coffee Break series. Boundaries can also be intangible, psychological ones like in the Backstage series, where I went to the photo shoots and operated on an instinct, relying on my skills and played it by the ear. It was also a lesson of forgetting control and being free within those boundaries, being in the moment.

I believe that restrictions are necessary to really be creative. Having this kind of concept to convey through the images allows me to concentrate and be at my best in creating visual things.