08 Jan Konsta Punkka – The Finnish Squirrel Whisperer

His images are magical pieces of artwork and there is a low probability that you haven’t already seen them. The 23 year old finnish photographer Konsta Punkka has more than one million followers on instagram by now and his pictures were shared countless times.

His photos are the result of hard work over several years. As a teenager he gave up his hopes for a career as a musician and started photographing. Hours by hours of practice and looking for the best places in Finland and Norway to get in contact with the country’s wildlife, complemented with a lot of patience over weeks to be accepted by the animals made him able to shoot these amazing pictures. He even got the name „The Squirrel Whisperer“ for he seem to build a very intimate relationship to them. But nevertheless they are still wildlife animals to him and the security and well-being of all animals he observes is located far above of getting a good picture.

Around 100 days of a year he is mainly photographing in Scandinavia – not only animals (from small mouse to big bears), also enchanted landscapes, misty forests and idyllic lonely cabins are part of his portfolio. Last year he was asked to photograph a puma in Chile, what turned out to be very difficult. „ You cannot hide from him, because it enlarges the chance to be attacked. We had to circle around him again and again and just hunker down for a short moment to take a picture.“ So the result of one week hard work were only four capable pictures.

Read an interview with Konsta Punkka to get more information about his work:

English: blog.iamnikon.com

German: spiegel.de

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