About Us

The Story

Harri Kyllonen is a Finnish professional photographer, entrepreneur and former top athlete (mogul skiing). He started freestyle skiing at the age of 11 in 1999 at the legendary Huttu-Ukko slope on Pyhatunturi, rose to the A national team and competed for 11 years at international level all the way up to 2014. His first World Cup event was held in Tignes, France in 2005, and his European Cup event win at Himos in 2010 is one of the best-known milestones of his career. He has won 13 Finnish Championship medals in all colours - 4 gold, 5 silver and 4 bronze.

Sport and photography grew side by side. Harri first picked up a video camera at the age of 12, filming his friends' freestyle tricks, and from that came the idea of making his own ski films. Harri was one of the skiers and one of the filmers, and he did all the editing and post-production himself. Among his friends, this gave rise to the name HK Production, which - in honour of those friends - was registered as a company in 2007. His first DSLR, a Canon EOS 400D, had been bought a year earlier, and it travelled with him on trips, training camps and competition journeys.

Full-time top-level sport forced him to build a profession he could do remotely from anywhere in the world. Taking photos on his travels brought a welcome counterbalance to the hectic life of elite sport, and at the same time made it possible to earn a little extra to support his sporting career. In turn, sport took Harri to places few ever reach: four continents and 30 different countries. During his international career he accumulated more than 1,200 days on the road and 470,000 kilometres on the odometer. Travelling around the world opened his eyes and brought plenty of new variety to his image collection.

The equipment grew along with his career. At the start, the camera was a Canon EOS 400D, which was first replaced by a Canon 40D and then by the Canon EOS 7D that became his workhorse, capturing more than a third of the entire collection. The full-frame era began with the Canon EOS 6D in 2013. In 2015 I acquired a new main body, the Canon EOS 5D Mark IV, which has been the primary camera ever since. As optics, professional-series lenses since 2009, mainly: the EF 24-70mm f/2.8L for landscapes and portraits, the EF 17-40mm f/4L for wide-angle sky shots and the EF 70-200mm f/2.8L + 2.0x Extender for distant subjects. Plus Canon's 85mm f/1.8 portrait lens and Sigma's 105mm f/2.8 macro lens.

The shooting locations are concentrated in the north. Finnish Lapland is the clearest home base: Pyhatunturi, Luosto, Rukatunturi and Riisitunturi appear in the names throughout the catalogue. The mountains of Northern Norway, the hills of Kuusamo and Lake Paijanne are favourite destinations - and, of course, the Archipelago Sea, now that he lives in Espoo. The mix also includes foreign countries such as Argentina, Switzerland, Thailand, Norway, Canada, the United States, Utah, Croatia, Bulgaria, France, Italy, Sweden, Ireland, England and Japan. Today the archive holds well over 100,000 photographs, of which around 1,100 carefully selected images are on sale. The image selection will grow significantly over the coming months as I finish going back through the archives and pick out thousands of images that have remained there to add to my online shop.

After the athlete years, business took centre stage. In 2016 the photography business gained its own brand, Northern Art Photos, which focuses on the sale of image and interior products as well as photography services. HK Production, for its part, continues as the home base for website production and as the main business name. The product range today covers almost a hundred individual image and interior products, all of which are made to order for the customer.

The unifying thread throughout the whole journey has been the same principle: to use photographs in a high-quality and versatile way.