“Animal whisperer” is hardly a conventional title for a person, but then the photography of 23-year-old Konsta Punkka is hardly conventional. The “self taught adventurer and wildlife photographer” from Helsinki, Finland frequently focuses his lens on furry forest creatures, and has become known for his intimate, emotional portraits of oft overlooked or feared animals. Like Snow White and her forest friends, Punkka’s wild subjects seemingly flock to him, though he credits his extreme patience and a study of animal habits for his success in getting capricious creatures to pause for a pose.
Four years ago, during a summer job at the technical museum of Finland, Punkka was assigned the task of shooting portraits of old Nokia phones. It was that experience, and his photography studies at Voionmaa Institute, that gave him the tools to translate his passion into a profession, quite literally. “I got my paycheck and I went straight to a camera shop and bought my first DSLR,” he admitted to AdoramaTV.
Punkka’s following of 1.1 million on Instagram places him in the rarefied ranks of celebrities on the photo-sharing app, and the momentum that comes with such a number means hundreds more join by the day to view his friendly critters and Scandinavian drone-scapes. Indeed Punkka seems to have cracked the code for guaranteeing positive comments on his images: make them either breathtakingly expansive landscapes or close-ups of furry animals. Who could have anything bad to say about a soft portrait of a baby raccoon betraying innocent curiosity through his eyes?
“I love to take close portraits of wildlife, to show their emotions and feelings,” Punkka shares with AdoramaTV. “I like to think that there’s sort of a secret world for the wildlife.”
Although Punkka is known for his shallow depth of field portraits of red squirrels–all mischievous glances and distinctive tufts of ear fur–he admits that his favorite animal to capture on film is the fox. “When we humans are busy with our lives, we forget the animals that live in the same city with us,” says Punkka, and foxes happen to be his shadow neighbors in Helsinki. It’s not just their proximity that makes them such popular subjects for his camera, but the range of emotion and “human-like impression” they have the ability to convey with their faces. “I want to show the beauty of wildlife, not in a documentary way but in an artistic way…to show what they feel and express.”
Konsta’s work will soon stretch far outside the borders of Scandinavia; he recently teamed up with Finland-based Integrated Carbon Observation System (ICOS), an “environmental research infrastructure” working to understand greenhouse gas balance in Europe. In his own words, he’ll be spending the next year traveling to visit their research stations around the world “to raise awareness of climate change and what we can do about it.” In between attempts to save the world, he promises to still make time to charm forest animals for his camera.
