About me
Hello there, and welcome to my site, in which I present my photographs and sewing projects!
My name is Timo, I was born in 1967 in Helsinki, Finland. I moved to Sweden in 1999 and been living in Stockholm ever since.
Nowadays, for weekdays, I work as a specialist physical therapist within mental health. Which is a bit special, not like working as a ”regular” physical therapist. Before I became a physical therapist, I educated myself to a dance movement therapist, and also to a public health scientist focused on stress prevention. In the meantime, I have additionally acquired a degree as a teacher in MBSR, Mindfulness-based stress prevention.
My first education was dancer education at the Theatre Academy in Helsinki. After that, I worked as a professional dancer within contemporary dance for several years, before moving to Sweden and Stockholm, to study Dance Movement Therapy.
Physical activity and exercise have always been important to me. In my youth, I practised athletics. My strongest event was 800 m. Then I started dancing, and I was hooked. Dance is physical activity, so training was daily activity for me for several years. At the same time, I also actively practised Astanga Vinyasa Yoga; the yoga style, in which I later also worked as an instructor. When my dance career was over, my interest in swimming emerged: I had been swimming regularly throughout the years from my teens. Now it became my main training. Nevertheless, even interest in it has now dropped somewhat. Nowadays, I often go to the gym and I also do some hatha yoga.
After having a background described above, I should be pretty well-equipped for stress; I have even worked as a physical therapist at the treatment centre for exhausted people. However, it turned out that was not the case. During the winter of 2018-19, I got sick leave related to exhaustion. Now I’m back in working life, though as a new person with new insights and plans for the future…
About photography
Earlier, I’ve never really been so interested in pictures or photos. But I like outdoor life. Therefore, when I was exhausted, I started walking a lot in forests, in various nature reserves around Stockholm and the Nordic countries. Mostly for rehabilitation but also because I like it so much. Then I noticed that I had begun to observe nature in a new and different way for me. I had begun to see details in nature, all beautiful in their own way. I also noted that I especially liked observing birds, without other natural phenomena and animal species being less interesting.
So here I am: I take pictures of things that I think are beautiful and/or interesting.
I have no ambition to be a pronounced nature photographer, in the sense that my photos should be ”natural”, to show nature as objective as possible … whatever that means. Nature is a great source of inspiration: I take pictures of nature, usually of birds, as I said. But then I process the images as I please, sometimes in several versions. Sometimes they become more nature-like, sometimes not.
I create pictures that I think are enjoyable to look at, that please my eye.
Hope one of the pictures also pleases your eye!
About sewing
I’ve always been interested in sewing; I’ve been doing it more or less my whole life. However, it has never been the area I was most interested in: I have always had a lot of other things that have interested me. But now my interest in sewing has blossomed and today I sew a lot. Mostly for myself and only things that I enjoy sewing. So far it has mostly been t-shirts and quilted plaid. Let’s see if my interest increases to something else…
With warm greetings