Finland has been one of my favourite location to visit of all time. I’ve visited this amazing country multiple times since the beginning of my travel journey. And each time, it never ceased to amaze me with unique experience and stories to tell. In the South where the capital of Finland Helsinki is located, holds the key to your first Scandinavia experience. And all the way up to the North, lies await the vast white landscape of untouched nature where one can enjoy peace and serenity in the wilderness.
Winter can be tough, expensive and unforgiving at times. If it’s your first time visiting any of the Scandinavian countries, I would strongly recommend to start with Finland. Not because It’s the best, but because it’s the easiest.
Finland offers one of the best way to experience true winter activities, while going easy on your pocket. Friends from all around the world are welcomed by the friendly and generous Finnish locals, and are encouraged to indulge in their rich culture and historical moments.
The album looks amazingly simplistic with its white base as the theme. What is it about?
Finland is a new location in the works. I wanted to start it off right. Mostly known to the world as a winter wonderland and a part of the Northern side of Earth, it only makes perfect sense to embrace this new series with a feel that most of us are familiar and can easily associate or connect emotionally with.
Thinking through the different journeys I had in Finland, there’s always a distinct similarity – The vastness of pine trees landscape covered in white across the land and how it’s been an integral part of the beauty in this country.
Was there a reason or motivation behind creating the album with this theme?
A very strong reason actually. If you take a look across all social media, the photos shared are usually “exaggerated”. By that I mean, it’s captured the perfect moment in a perfect place at a perfect time. It’s beautiful and greatly inspires traveller to visit that location obviously, but it may not necessarily represent that place in its true nature.
For example, in my first image of a frozen lake with only one subject – This is what 90% of us would see. That remaining 10% who captured something amazingly beautiful with the lake as the backdrop or foreground, are either photographers who camped at this location for a long period of time, or got lucky to see something that all of us came here for.
So why bother showing something that 90% of us would see? Because no one would. In fact, perhaps most wouldn’t even bother snapping a shot of this location without any spectacle here. But it’s this exact reason that made this image even more compelling than ever.
All of us had perhaps, at some point in time, stood at this exact location staring out into this emptiness with only one thing in mind – Hope. Hoping to see the Northern Lights dancing right in front of us. But none of us looked down to appreciate how it can also be beautiful just the way it is.
At that realization, I became much more aware of the things on the ground rather than always up above us. So that became the motivation to create a unique series featuring the landscape that stood still for majority of the time and a sense of reality living in winter.
With such a powerful message and emotions attached to each image, what is it that you want people to feel when they see this album?
Similar to all the other albums I’ve created, this too is crafted with the goal of immersive experience beyond just the images itself. With a compelling story and emotions brought along in each of these images, you get to feel what it’s like being in that place. While there are images out there that aims to inspire and wow you with the “perfect moment capture”, I hope mine can manage to capture more on the ground, closer to reality – something which if you’re willing to take a moment to pause and look, you will see the beauty hidden in the landscape.
This album’s main focus is winter. But not just images about the spectacle of winter. Nor is it going to be a series of intimate images of the local lives. But more on the overall difficulty and harshness of winter portrayed in the vast landscape of these Northern regions.
In a total of 7 images, I wanted to bring a bout a transition of emotions – just like how day transits into night. The daylight hours during winter is extremely short and for anyone who’s been there really, you tend get a feeling of “gloomy or dark” for the most part of it. Not in a negative way, but the ambience is just not as bright as it would’ve been if it’s daytime. So similarly, these images are handpicked and arranged in away that it carries the feeling of dark and gloomy to hopeful and bright.
And by placing these images as the centre piece of a simple story, the short narration for each of them will create a natural flow of story in these locations, and what it felt being in that place.
Because really, all of us took photos of a moment, location or event because it meant something to us. It carried your excitement, joy and exhilaration during that particular moment. When your trip ends, you know you had a story to tell just like I do.
Will there be more album or a short series around Finland too, and what might they be?
Most definitely. While I’m still working on the final album for my 3 part series of New Zealand, by introducing Finland as a new location would perhaps help to create some varieties and themes.
There is a lot to cover. Finland is an amazing country – if I hadn’t emphasised that enough already – that shares a lot of different perspectives such as living in the North, cultural differences and similarities, the beauty and preservations of its landscape, and most importantly, its people.
And what I can say is, the vision I had in mind for the Finland series would be quite dramatically different from my New Zealand series. New Zealand focuses a lot on the natural sculpture and dynamic landscape the country has to offer, whereas Finland will focus a lot more on emotions and intimacy of the nature.
THESE ALBUMS ARE ALSO AVAILABLE
“The Remarkable Mountains”
“7 Colours of the South”
Download this album today and subscribe before 30th October to gain access to a downloadable link for the signature photo!
I take seriousness and a considerable amount of time to craft these content. Not only because I love doing it and sharing these images, but I too love to tell these amazing travel stories to people. The journey we take will always be unique to each of us.
And what can be better than being able to come together to share and tell all these amazing stories from all around the world?
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Warning: The photo album is produced in very high quality and thus, the file size is approximately 50MB. Please ensure you’re on WiFi before you download it!
“The Deep Winter” Finland Album
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