From iPhone Edits to Leica Dreams: One Man’s Journey into Everyday Documentary Photography

I’m a photographer based in and out of Helsinki, Finland. 

Well… I guess in reality I’m an enthusiastic hobbyist in photography. That is, I don’t get to spend all of my time playing and working with a camera. Rather, most of my time I actually spend with my wife and two kids or working as a technology lawyer and an attorney. And I also moonlight as a guitar player for a cover band.

So with so many things occupying my hours, why do I even shoot, you might ask.

At the time of writing this, I’m a few weeks over being 41 years old. While I’ve been playing guitar for some 30 years, photography entered my life relatively late. In fact, it is all thanks to the iPhone 4 and an app called Camera+ that I found out about around in 2010 or so. The app was nothing more than a few basic sliders, like highlights, shadows, contrast and clarity. But the native camera apps didn’t have that sort of luxury available back in the day. And it was the ability to take a shot and easily adjust it to make it look better what got me excited about taking photos. Not the DSLR, or film cameras, but a modern-day smartphone.

So, few months after graduating, I went and bought myself a Canon 7D in early 2012. And that’s when it all really got started for me. Sure, the phone was nice. But having an actual camera in my hand was such a step up and gave me a big boost in inspiration.