Signature artist of the month

“Visual stories have inspired me my entire life,” Rasmus said. “I am always trying to improve and take better pictures. I don’t have to look for external motivation, it just grows inside me.”

Together, Rasmus and Janek make up the team behind iStock by Getty Images portfolio VisualSpace. The two met while in college but it wasn’t until several years later when they reconnected and discovered they were each working with imagery — Rasmus as a photographer and Janek as a videographer — that they decided to join forces.

“We’re definitely stronger as a team,” Rasmus said. “We spend all day together bouncing ideas off each other and giving feedback. It’s easier for us to succeed when we work together. Photography and video are such different formats so since each of us is specialized in one, we’re more effective during shoots and can provide people with more content.”

“We love to discover new places, we want to go everywhere,” Janek said. “It’s much easier to ask us where we don’t want to go than where we do want to go. We usually take three or four big trips a year and we’re always shooting.”

Each of them started out in street photography, so when traveling, they naturally gravitate toward this style and like to simply wander and explore.

“We both want to have as authentic an experience as possible,” Rasmus said. “People really inspire me so I love walking the streets and just communicating with the local people.”

“It’s a totally different culture and experience for us. Japan is such an unusual and fascinating place,” Janek said. “There is a unique symmetry to the people and architecture. When I frame the crowds of Japanese people with the background of the city and streets I see something I haven’t seen anywhere else. It’s the combination of the cleanness, the minimalism, the geometry, the architecture and the posture of the people that provide a very unique style to imagery.”

As a result of their frequent travels, their portfolio represents a wide range of people and cultures.

“When you live in a little country like Estonia and you go outside and see how many different things there are in the world, you realize that the world is built on diversity,” Janek said. “It’s important to reflect this and embrace the different kinds of people that exist.”

Through their lenses, Rasmus and Janek hope to show the world from a new perspective and help people recognize that it is our differences that unite us.