Focus on storytelling over perfection
Exploring timeless storytelling through visual language
Discover the streets of Rome with Anna Landstedt as she travels with the Leica Q3 43, photographing moments that appear in front of her lens. A mix of centuries-old and new, the city is the perfect canvas for Anna’s signature style - color, striking details, and exploring timeless locations that evoke the feeling of an endless summer. Growing up a CODA (child of a deaf adult), visual language had a huge influence on Anna from an early age, and photography has become an extension of her personal visual language. Combined with illustrations and other mixed media, Anna’s photography offers a window into her imagination - each trigger of the shutter creates a new perspective of her environment, slowing down time with her subject before the moment elapses.
To me photography is a way to communicate beyond words. A way of translating memories and sensory experiences into a visual language. Through my lens, I intuitively aim to capture the joy of fleeting moments – it’s not about creating the perfect shot, but instead capturing and preserving a feeling or emotion. The way it feels, rather than the way it looks.
Anna Landstedt
About Anna
Anna Landstedt is a Swedish photographer and visual creator based in Copenhagen, Denmark. With a passion for capturing life’s moments through her lens, her style of photography can be described as a blend of candid and curated shots with a touch of cinematic artistry. One of the hallmarks of Landstedt’s photography is the ability to evoke nostalgia in her viewers. By infusing her images with a dream-like quality and a deep empathy for her subjects and surroundings, she aims to transport viewers to the aesthetics of an endless summer. By combining photography with other digital mixed media, such as graphic design and hand-drawn illustrations, she is able to curate and create a broad range of bespoke and personal projects.
Combining photo with illustration
Illustrations or “doodles” were some of Anna’s first creative outlets growing up and they are something she revisits time again. Not being a typical format to pair with photography, Anna’s drawings and mixed media work add another layer to her creative process, allowing her to curate and overlay moments she has captured with the personal memories of a place, time, or feeling. Anna likes to add a sense of playfulness to scenes she is photographing, and the blend of illustrations and images allows her to translate her experience in quiet moments, away from the distractions of everyday life.
The Q3 43 proved the perfect companion for my style of photography. It’s compact enough and intuitive, allowing me to be spontaneous and focus on authentic, unplanned moments. The focal length is versatile, close enough for intimate portraits or detail shots, yet wide enough to capture the full context, helping me frame and combine scenes into a full story.
Anna Landstedt
Capturing moments with instinct and light
When photographing, I focus on capturing feelings rather than on technical precision. Staying within the f/2.8-f5.6 range gives me an overall balance between sharpness and depth.
I prefer natural light and tend to underexpose slightly to preserve the highlights, as I often photograph in bright situations at any hour of the day – I’ll find the light that match the vibe and story I want to tell.
By keeping my gear light and always having my camera on me when traveling, I’ve learned to trust my instincts and allow imperfections add to the authenticity of the storytelling.
My workflow starts with culling by emotion; if an image doesn’t make me feel something, I leave it out. In editing, I tweak and build up the photos to match the experience I had when taking it – using a single base preset to maintain consistency in a photo series but adding a few standout images where I push the colors, add illustrations or crop it in an unexpected way to add another layer to the story.
The perfect photo does not exist. It’s the unlocked memory and feeling it triggers that makes it extraordinary.
Anna Landstedt
