Encountering Creativity Through Ice Photography (by Tuula Ahde)
Tuula Ahde is an amateur macro photographer with a background in visual and online learning design. She co-created Photoyoga For The Mind in 2017 with a psychotherapist friend. As photographers, they had both intuitively used photography as part of their own recovery, inadvertently discovering novel ways to combine simple creative acts with the development of deeper self-understanding, awareness, and expression.
I asked if Tuula might be open to sharing her story with us in The Haven. It’s a beautiful reminder that creativity can emerge in unexpected and playful ways. It also illustrates the relationship between deep sensitivity and creativity as a means of processing, responding to, and expressing ourselves in the world.
My Journey Into Creativity (by Tuula Ahde)
I never considered myself a creative person. I used to think creativity meant ‘real art’: painting, composing or performing music, or writing novels. Those things that clearly stood out as art. And I was not doing any of that.

I’ve always had a vivid imagination and a sense of playfulness. Weird stories or words often come from my mouth before I have time to think and stop them. I didn’t see that as creativity. It was just me. Mostly just repeating, producing, even copying. Not really creating anything unique or meaningful.
That belief has now slowly changed. Before, even my photography was just ‘blah’. I was just capturing what was already there.
But the shift happened by following something that fascinated me, something that felt like home in a way I couldn’t quite explain. Ice.
And also, Andy metaphorically grabbed me by the ears when he looked at me and said I was ‘oozing’ with creativity. I didn’t dare to say, ‘No, that is not true.’ I had to believe (a little bit).
Now, when people tell me my ice photos are unique, I’m beginning to accept that what makes them mine is not just the technical side of taking cool pictures. It’s the way I see, the way I connect with the ice, the emotions and thoughts that I weave into the process.
It’s about processing life, not just with thoughts or knowledge hoarding, but by creating. Maybe that’s what creativity really is…finding a way to let what’s inside you come through, in whatever form it chooses. Creativity is not just in the end result.
Creatures in My Creativity and Inner Explorations
I don’t feel comfortable showing myself in photos or videos, but my alter ego, Impi, helps me see myself better. Impi is fully covered in fur, so all you (or rather ’I’) can see is emotions – no clear human (or other living) form. She is easier to look at, to see her. And her qualities and abilities are linked to my love for winter, snow and ice.
Impi is an old Finnish name, a poetic version of a word that means ‘a virgin’; metaphorically, someone who is untouched by love. I don’t remember how I chose the name. Maybe the name chose us.

Impi is the cousin of The Groke from the Moomins; a lonely character who freezes everything she touches. She is searching for friendship, warmth, and love. She leaves a trace of ice, snow, and freezing mist when she walks. Anything she touches will freeze. She has even put out forest fires and campfires just by sitting on them – useful in that sense, although most times she is feared.
I’ve noticed Impi is happiest when I invite her to play. When I make her visible.
Impi really surfaced into my world in 2016, when she introduced ice to me, as if guiding me to really notice what had always been there in my favourite season. She is always with me when I take photos at night, in the darkness, cold, and silence.
When I Started Photographing Ice
I started photographing ice then, in 2016, at our cottage, when the weather suddenly turned really cold. Stormy winds and freezing temperatures made the lake freeze crystal clear, with all kinds of weird frozen details. It was like a crazy glassblower had created an unimaginable art exhibition. I spent hours and hours photographing them in the darkness, wanting to capture as many as possible before the snow came and buried them all. I was hooked and inspired.
Then there’s Raven, Impi’s only friend. He’s different, but he’s also very important for me. He appears and disappears, sometimes in my images and photos, sometimes in my thoughts. By coincidence, he has a real-life counterpart too: a wise, safe, and playful friend who comes and goes.
Impi and Raven give me courage and tools to bring out the frozen parts of myself, to make them visible, to let them melt.
Not everyone sees a raven in this image…
Abstracts and Tangibles: Seeing Beyond the Ice
Most of my ice photos are abstract. They hold more emotion than something you can clearly define. But sometimes, I see something tangible within them; a scene, a face, a story.
When I share my photos on social media, people often comment on what they see. I love that. The ice doesn’t have just one story; it holds many. On the other hand, some images, like the raven, show me something so obvious that I can’t unsee it. The same with the tin soldiers hugging…
And then there are the envelopes. Letters have always been important to me. They are a way to put thoughts into form. Envelopes appear in my photos, unplanned but persistent. Always welcomed when they appear in my vision. They feel like a bridge between the weird worlds and scenes I see in ice and the real world, making the unknown somehow more recognisable.
The Gear and the Outdoor Studio On My Mystery Mountains
My studio is the outdoors.
Ice changes with temperature, humidity, and light. Sometimes, but not often, I find natural ice in perfect form – clear enough. Most of the time, I have to be an active pot stirrer and create clear ice – not in a freezer, but by letting nature do the freezing on its own terms. It is always a surprise what I get into my pot!
I start by photographing the ice as it is. Then I might break it into smaller pieces or pour hot water over it to create cracks (for this, it needs to be cold enough, -10°C or colder).
This breaking and cracking feels symbolic. It mirrors my own inner process. What happens to me when something breaks? What can I see in the cracks?
Some of the most beautiful images come from naturally melting ice – soft, delicate, fleeting.
Music
This is also when I most often turn towards music to accompany the process or the outcome. To enhance the emotion or make photos come alive. It is a vulnerable state of being for me and I need the music to feel safe and right, to connect to the same sound that I have in me. That is why I’m drawn to Andy’s music or some mystic Nordic sounds. I can feel how they resonate with me and with my ice photos.


The Tools I Use
I don’t use professional gear. My cameras are old phones, my lenses are cheap clip-ons. Different phones provide different results. Some are softer and dreamlike, others are sharp and detailed. I choose them based on what I want to capture, or maybe on how I feel that day.
My light sources are the sun (preferably at sunset) or old headlamps when it’s dark outside. Sadly, I’ve lost most of my lamps, and the new ones are either too bright or have LED light that is too harsh and flashy, which shows in photos.
Post-Processing
The post-processing has changed over the years. At the beginning, I edited my photos a lot more – creating a dark vibe in Photoshop/Camera Raw. Now, I mostly create the darkness already when I take photos. That means most of my photos get only minimal post-processing – for example contrast and sharpening.
Most really detailed macro photos you see out there are made with a technique called ‘focus stacking,’ where the camera moves on a rail one millimetre at a time, changing the focus point, and sometimes hundreds of images are combined in post-processing to create a sharp image. I don’t have that kind of process or equipment. I have the luxury of only one shot. Sometimes I combine two shots in Photoshop, but that is very rare.
That is also what makes macrophotography so interesting: moving your camera (or phone) just one millimetre can reveal a completely different view! It’s frustrating, of course, when you really want to take another shot but have to adjust your posture, or your camera slips on an icy surface, making it impossible to find the same spot again. That’s when I have to tune into my body and its memory – its exact aches, pains, and sensations – to rediscover the same place and position.
Repetitiveness That Isn’t Repetitive
I can photograph the same small chunks of ice in the same place day after day, hour after hour. They are never really the same. The weather changes them. The light shifts. New cracks appear. They melt. I don’t expect to see what I saw yesterday – I go with the hope of finding something that touches me, something that sparks that inner feeling of recognition – not recognising the exact same thing I saw earlier.
There are times when I fall into production mode. Trying to ensure I have at least one shot with decent focus means I might take dozens of nearly identical shots (and then I can’t choose which ones to keep, so I keep and edit them all). Or I just get frustrated and hope that something emerges from what, at the time, feels like nothing but disappointments.
Sometimes, I love the shooting process so much that I just go back outside and leave the photos unedited for months, even years.
When there are thousands of images waiting to be processed, it might feel overwhelming rather than an exciting treasure trove to revisit. That’s when I know I’ve disconnected from creativity, from the joy of discovery. This is when I know I need a proper break – maybe summer – to get excited again next autumn.
Kota Replay
Watch the replay of our Kota gathering when Tuula shared more and answered questions.
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