Fotonokka

Justus Järnefelt is the CEO of Fotonokka. Leader Justus shares the same wide and generous human perception as photographer Justus does. 



His vision is to allow all the flowers and talents to flourish in their own expertise, and to make Fotonokka a safe haven to artistic and creative minds and professionals. He believes different kinds of stories need different voices and tones for them to be told right. 



Justus has tackled the role of CEO with the same kind of thorough determination he prepares for his shoots – always wanting to find out more, dig deeper and understand the human mind better. 

For something new to be born, a midwife is needed. Someone who is there when a project isn’t even in the works yet, someone who sees the glint of a possibility, catches the smallest of hints, takes the lead and guides, nurtures and oversees everything from start to finish – and everything in between. 

This someone is Kaisa Pelkonen. Kaisa is a creative problem solver whose job is to be on top of everything. She is the trusted person clients have come to rely upon, and she is usually the first one to get a call. In practise, Kaisa is responsible for the smooth running of Fotonokka productions. With a solid experience, she’s in charge of scheduling, booking professionals as well as locations, and always being aware of everything that needs to happen. She enjoys seeing how seemingly small details contribute to something bigger; the right people end up together, chemistries match and the end result is exactly as it was always supposed to be. 

Kaisa is a wizard in reading small signals, interpreting client needs and translating them into a creative brief. She also has a strong visual mind and designer’s soul, and she loves to put them into use in her role as a stylist, often making something out of nothing and the impossible possible. 

When renting a studio space at Fotonokka, you have the option of renting lights and cameras from our wide and ever growing range of production equipment. If you want to ask more, Tapio is the person to contact on all rental needs.

Tapio Ranta-aho is a promising young talent, who builds his moving images and photographs with a meticulous approach, always with the complete story in his mind. Tapio’s versatility shines in team work, and he is endlessly interested in trying out new techniques and sharing ideas with the whole team.

The light in Tapio’s work is always realistic and natural, and he is pedantic about getting his compositions just right. Although he loves to plan every detail, Tapio is quick to work out solutions to challenges and come up with new ideas when things change.

If you’re lucky enough to have had a chance to work with Tapio, you know that his can do -attitude, endless idea bank and professionalism are met with a generous passion towards lighting and cinematography.

Tapio’s happy place is anywhere around sea and navigation.

When magic needs to happen, you better call Minna. (We do.) 
Minna Lilja is a stylist, visualist, props master, and generally the chief of making things happen. 
She has 20 years of experience in visual marketing from top Finnish department stores Stockmann and Sokos, and in recent years she has honed her expertise in photography production.

Minna loves to play her part in the band that is required especially in big photography productions. She also takes great pride in working with top notch photography talents and production professionals in Finland. What she tends to repeatedly forget, is that she herself is one of them. 

If you have ever had the chance to work with Minna, you will not forget it. Her big heart and warmth radiates into everything she does and everyone she works with.

If there’s something Kristiina Hemminki hasn’t done with her camera then it cannot be done.

Kristiina is a classically educated and very experienced photographer and has as wide a range in her topics as is her warm smile. In her, technical expertise and creative exuberance coexist in beautiful harmony.

There is no situation where she cannot make the set her home and everyone around her feel amazing. Her contagious energy carries through the toughest of shooting days with everyone participating and joining in on the fun.

Blank canvas or out of ideas? No problem. When Kristiina takes the wheel, you feel inspired and encouraged, and you can be certain your vision is cradled and nurtured into a beautiful finished product and everything just simply works.

You don’t just watch Krisse’s photographs, you feel them. Deep, strong and as vivid as the topic were actually present, Krisse’s pictures mesmerize and leave wanting for more.

Originally a carpenter, Mikko Tikka is a brand photographer with a wide range of expertise from still life to product and package photographs to cinematography and technical retouching. All of this Mikko achieves with rigorous order and technical expertise.

If Mikko wasn’t a photographer, he could very well be a Swiss engineer. His shoots run like clockwork, and just as hard-core professionals everywhere operate, there are no useless moves, no excess, no frills; only harmony, pure focus and mastery of the craft.

The calmness and zen Mikko oozes transfer to the whole team, and create an atmosphere where everyone has a sense of peace and purpose.

Mikko’s pictures are hyper realistic; in a sense more real than the actual objects themselves.

In Mikko’s work, respect is a recurring theme. Respect for the craft, as well as deep respect for whatever it is that he photographs; to him, everything is interesting in its own being, and he wants to dig deep into the essence of what he sees through his camera lens.

Mikko is at his element in shoots that really require the photographer to go all in.

Elina Himanen is an expert in food, living and interior photography. Her own natural serenity shows in her still lifes – her compositions are true visual poetry.

Elina builds entire worlds in her imagination, and she has the rare ability to materialize them into a strong vision, and manifest them into something real and tangible in her photographs. Elina’s way of working is to completely immerse herself into her work, let her creativity take the lead and then just follow along with the inevitable magic that ensues.

Elina’s lens sees deep into the heart of everything, all the way to the core for the essential to reveal itself to her. The soulfulness of her photographs makes them a delicious refuge in the world of abundance, a moment of mindfulness for the eye.

Elina loves to ground herself with making pottery and allowing her mind to rest while her hands do meditative chores.

Sara Lehtomaa, like her photographs, is enchanted by people.

She mostly works with fashion, as she is enthralled with the strong visuality of the garments and their materials, but above all, the people that fashion essentially is for.

Sara’s lens catches the beauty in everyone, and everything, and like a magician she has the ability to make her models light up in front of the camera and realise their own uniqueness.

Sara herself is not quite sure how she does it, but people whisperer could very well be her side job. She has a deep urge to understand people, all people, and her world is guided by curiosity and wonder.

Armed with a strong vision, Sara believes that sometimes exaggeration is the best way to achieve a photograph that really states something and underlines the spirit of the person in front of the camera.

In all of her photoshoots, Sara makes sure everyone feels comfortable and seen. Her excited manner is contagious and has a way of bringing out the best in everyone. In Sara’s photographs, joy is palpable and ever present.

Paula Kesäläinen is an expert in still life photography. The colourful, playful and sensual visual worlds she builds are a true testament of her vision and creativity, as well as strongtalent in studio lighting and composition.

Paula, like her images, is one of a kind as a professional. The more challenging the situation, the more she is at her core element and is as rigorous in her attention to detail and nuances, as imaginative and pioneering in the visual concepts she creates.

Paula’s style is highly recognisable in it’s expressiveness, yet she always manages to bring something new into the visuality of the brands she photographs, making them impossible to walk or scroll past without stopping.

If she wasn’t a photographer, Paula would be a circus artist.

Tomas Olsen is one of our super talented young photographers. He has recently worked in Stockholm, and brings along a lot of fresh ideas from his experience in Sweden. Currently Tomas focuses on still-life photography, but his goal is to bring stop motion and animation more widely into use in Finnish brands and their digital imagery.

Tomas has his own, unique style, where normal, everyday things turn into something completely different and unexpected. He creates space for small, eccentric details that can only be seen through a thorough viewing. Tomas has a keen eye for composition and form. Through simplicity and elegant use of light, he brings his subjects to life.

Tomas draws inspiration from everything around him, be it light, shapes, nature or people. He has a way of letting creativity flow freely so that he can come up with unique concepts and ideas. When he’s not behind a camera or an edit board, Tomas can be found close to nature and the sea where he enjoys spending time.

Elvi Rista is a photographer extraordinaire. Her unique and recognizably drool-worthy food pictures in Helsingin Sanomat have captivated readers for years, and her people portraits are equally captivating in their ability to reveal the soul of the person she photographs. 

Even though she practically grew up in a darkroom as a child (coming from a long lineage of photographers), Elvi has always been fascinated by light. For her, a photograph is always a dance with light, and her camera a medium for connection. Elvi’s inspiration and her visual cues come from everywhere around her, tangible and intangible, even things that cannot be seen, only felt.

Everything Elvi does is done with strong sense and feeling, and those emotions are an essential element in her photographs. They engage the viewer, and will not let go until something has moved deep within.

London calling! Ossi Piispanen is a photographer who always, always puts people front and center. His high energy photoshoots have captivated clients from football clubs to big international brands, and the world doesn’t seem to get enough of him and his signature quirky, documentary, and yet classical style – with a twist that only Ossi can bring.

Although Ossi has a strong technical background, he often loves to shake things up and not take the conventional route. It is not uncommon for Ossi to shoot something that was initially thought out to be a portrait in a landscape form – and vice versa.

Few things inspire Ossi more than being presented with an opportunity to dive head first into a subject that he knows absolutely nothing about, and put his mind and soul into digging out everything there is to know about the subject at hand.

New people and cultures, whether mainstream or underground, fascinate Ossi immensely, and he enjoys challenging his own thoughts and ideas by keeping an open mind and learning from different people and different ways of thinking. He strongly believes that a photographer’s biggest asset (right after his camera and his eye) are his communication skills.

Despite the fact that Ossi has lived in London for over a decade, he often works in his Homeland shooting a variety of personal and commissioned projects for clients like VR, Red Bull, The Guardian and Finlandia Vodka. You can take the boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy.

Kimmo Metsäranta has a gift of bringing a sense of true artistic quality into the simplest of photographs. His background in fine art photography has refined his eye to seeing things in a truly unique manner and the sense of compelling strength and surprise is present in his photographs.

When working on a photo set Kimmo is a gentle leader, quick problem solver and a decisive master of his craft. His clear intuition and great amount of creative bravery allow Kimmo to break away from the controlling rules of a photographic process, and reach out for the unexpected.

Kimmo has a Master´s degree in Photography and has held numerous exhibitions in Finland and abroad. His artistic work has also been nominated for several awards, including the Fotofinlandia and Sony Photography Award.

When not on commercial assignments Kimmo loves to engage in his personal projects in the fields of fashion, design and architecture.

bio coming shortly