Photography homepage of Samuli Siltanen
I am a Finnish semiprofessional photographer specializing in spiders, landscapes, portraits and urban views.
You can contact me by email using the address 
.
My most recent photography is shown in my photo blog:
Samples of my best work are shown on these pages:
Portraits
Landscapes
Urban views
Spiders and insects
Still lifes
My personal history as a photographer
The early years (1984-1989)
My photography started as a hobby in the early 1980's when my father let me take some color slides with his Minolta rangefinder camera using 35mm film. Later he bought a Pentax SLR and a few zoom lenses which I learned to use. This is my first-ever photographic documentary:
Graffiti in Helsinki (1986)
My high school art teacher set up a darkroom in the school basement and taught our class to use it. That's when I got really excited about photography and bought my first own camera in 1987. It was a Pentax Super A body with a 50 mm f/1.4 prime lens. I familiarized myself with wonderful products such as Kodak Tri-X 400 film and legendary Agfa Rodinal developer. Oh, the massive grain structure!
Soviet Union (1987-1988)
Sielun veljet live at Lepakko (December 6, 1988)
Monochrome madness (1990-2002)
In the period 1990-2002 I became interested in increasing the resolution and level of detail in monochrome photography. I purchased a 6x6cm medium format camera (Mamiya) and a view camera (Arca-Swiss), exposed a lot of film, and experimented with darkroom techniques. Lith and pyro developers resulted in some nice pictorial effects.
The monochrome period left me with some 30000 hand-developed negatives.
The digital era (2003-present)
I bought my first digital camera while working as a postdoctoral researcher in Japan in 2003. I haven't been in the darkroom since!
I became a university professor in the field of mathematics in 2006, and the job involves a lot of traveling. That's why my recent art involves a lot of landscape and cityscape photos.
These days I shoot with a Pentax K-5 body and mostly with my beloved Carl Zeiss lenses (21mm f/2.8, 50mm f/2 macro and 85mm f/1.4).
This page was last updated on January 26, 2014.