Where did you get the idea for Sceneframing photography?

In 2013 we decided to do a roadtrip based on famous filming locations (Harry Potter, Sherlock, Doctor Who) in the United Kingdom. Tiia had this idea for photos where we would line up a print from the show with the background – she’d seen it done with old photos that were lined up with the modern setting. She forgot the prints at home and Satu had a tablet with her, so we figured we’d try if it worked with the screen instead of prints.
A few months after the trip Tiia posted the first “sceneframing” photos online and in just a few days they got over 60,000 shares! At this point, our friends and thousands of Tumblr blog followers encouraged us to continue taking more of these photos… and the idea for a blog was born.

How do you find all the locations?

It depends on the show or movie. Some of the more popular shows with active fandoms like Supernatural and The Walking Dead have entire websites dedicated to listing all the locations and their exact addresses / coordinates. For Game of Thrones in Northern Ireland there’s even an app that helps you find the right spots! Sometimes it’s a bit trickier, especially with older movies. We might just know the city or general area where something has been filmed and then we compare Google street view with scenes from the movie to find the locations. It can be real detective work!

Tell us about the process of sceneframing.

First, we need to decide where to go and what shows/films to cover. That usually happens very naturally: we either get invited to a destination as guests or we decide to travel there on our own. After that, we start the research work so we’ll know what was filmed there and if the locations are accessible to us. Next, we watch the shows and the films, capturing any promising looking scenes and shots that we might be able to align with the original background. In between all the watching and capturing, we also check for location info online and collect all the data on lists and maps.

Our traveling style is very rarely relaxing. We wake up at dawn and try to use all available daylight, which means long days of exploring and photographing. But it’s the way we like it – I don’t think we could manage half a day at the pool without worrying we’re going to miss something awesome if we don’t go and look for it!

Once we get home, we try to draft out a list of blog stories to write and what photos are needed. Tiia then edits all the photography together, including the sceneframes that usually take some photoshopping due to reflections on the screen and such.

It is a *lot* more work than any average photo diary travel blogging, but it’s what we’re passionate about so we don’t really even think about it.

What else do you write about?

We write about everything and anything interesting in any destinations we visit: places to eat, stay and drink… Experiences like ziplines, helicopter rides, wildlife adventures, fun parks and of course, movie related things to do… Museums, exhibitions, events and the like. We’re hardcore fans of all things related to movies, TV, culture, arts and adventure and we love to share it all with our readers to inspire them to explore.

What has been the greatest / most challenging / most exciting location you’ve visited?

It’s really hard to pick a favorite location out of all the ones we’ve visited so far. Some are stunning because of their natural beauty: the majestic cliffs and beaches of Wales and Northern Ireland, for example. Some are important to us because they’ve been featured in our all time favorite shows and scenes, like Riverview Hospital in Vancouver, seen in Supernatural and a dozen other shows we watch. The challenging ones have been places that it’s hard to get to, like the Kananaskis Mountains seen in Brokeback Mountain or some closed-off locations of The Walking Dead in Atlanta, GA.

What is your goal?

We hope to encourage people to travel to destinations that are already familiar to them from their screens and to raise awareness of film tourism as a great way of traveling. We’re working on building comprehensive filming location guides for all our favorites and we want to keep expanding those, adding new shows and locations as we travel more.

What’s the next destination you’re going to visit?

As of today (when writing this FAQ), we don’t have anything confirmed for the next couple of months, which is a rare occasion. On the top of our must go list we have places like New Zealand, Hawaii, Croatia, many parts of Spain and many, many more countries and cities we haven’t visited yet.

Any fun stories you can share?

Oh, so many. There’s that time we got stuck in the desert sand while trying to get to a Doctor Who location at Lake Powell in Utah… or that time we got lost in a dark forest in Wales and thought we’d get eaten by monsters. Or all those times we met some awesome fellow fans on set while watching a favorite show being filmed and waiting for any of the actors to come out and say hi. You’ll just have to browse through the blog to read about it all, we think!