“The color blue is something I get drawn into,” says photographer Mikko Lagerstedt to the Phoblographer in an interview. “It’s hard to know exactly why it is so, but it’s just something I enjoy in my type of photography. I love the feeling it creates as well.” When you peer into Mikko’s images you’re taken to a dreamscape that does something that good art accomplishes: it makes you feel something. Some might be turned off by the cold, but entranced by the ethereal scenes. Others might feel a sense of calm that only certain blue tones can deliver. No matter what you feel, there’s no mistaking that Mikko’s work is incredible.
All images by Mikko Lagerstedt. Used with permission. Please check him out on Instagram @mikkolagerstedt and at his website. We’ve featured Mikko here on the site a few times. See more of his work here.
How Mikko Lagerstedt Got Into Photography
Mikko first got into the art form when he was drinking out to a relative’s cabin. “It was a summer evening in 2007, and after a rainy day, the sun came out, and so did the fog,” he describes. “I had to stop taking a couple of photographs with a point-and-shoot camera. As I was going through the images I captured, I was amazed.” A year later, he dove into photography. Mikko has been known to shoot with DSLRs but in rent years he switched to Nikon Z mount cameras. His lenses include the 14-24 mm f2.8, 24-70 f2.8, and 70-200 f2.8.
:I have the 24-70 on my camera most of the time. Also, a sturdy tripod is necessary if you want to capture sharp photographs in low light.”
Mikko also does 90% of his work in Lightroom these days. He references that you can do complex masking in it, but he doesn’t talk about how much of the work is done in post-production vs in-camera. We’d have to assume most of it is done in-camera.
Losing Ourselves In His Images
Mikko, of course, loves the color blue. It’s a dominant tone in his iamges that’s sometimes accompanied by green, orange, purple, etc. These aren’t images that we could easily find done by AI — and Mikko is happy to know that. He doesn’t even think that those are photographs — instead he thinks them to be representations of digital art.
There are lots of reasons to fall in love with Mikko’s work. Where several landscape photographers go out and capture images pretty plainly while doing a bit of editing, Mikko’s photographs don’t look cliche. Instead, they remind us of ethereal dreams that you can’t really put a finger on. I imagine this is why people have dream journals. But these photographs present us with a sense of mystery that keeps us guessing. There’s also a simplicity in them that makes the photos feel both familiar and foreign.
Ultimately, this is the type of thing that could go different ways. One could look at the images and feel like they’re a promotion for the latest episode of Black Mirror or the Twilight Zone. Look at them another way, and we can feel a sence of solance and silence that we truly need in our lives these days.
AUTHENTICITY STATEMENT
The Phoblographer works with human photographers to verify that they’ve actually created their work through shoots. These are done by providing us assets such as BTS captures, screenshots of post-production, extra photos from the shoot, etc. We do this to help our readers realize that this is authentically human work. Here’s what this photographer provided for us.