Young Photographer Creates A Bond With Wild Animals To Get These Extreme Close-Ups

Meet Konsta Punkka, a 21-year-old Finish photographer and an owner of one of the most popular Instagram accounts with over 750,000 followers. How did he gather such a following? It's by posting these amazing close-up shots of wild animals.

The Helsinki-based photographer has a sense of calmness and confidence about him that allows him to get incredibly close to his wild subjects. And it's not just something he inherited, he's also willing to work hard for that perfect shot. As he told Colossal, one winter, he crawled for hours at the mouth of a cave to nail a single shot.

And to get these extreme close-ups you need that. You need patience to build a bond between you and your subject. Punkka does that by giving animals time to get accustomed to him and sometimes by giving them treats. But as he said in his interview to Bored Panda: “The feeding thing in my photographs is more like a thing I want to show to the people, that the animals trust me and they allow me to get really close to them. I don’t feed these guys much, just a few peanuts to get them stay close to me to take the shots.”

More info: instagram | 500px (h/t: boredpanda)

You've seen his recent work, now take a look at where he's started.