Mikkel Aaland (born 1952) is a Norwegian-American photographer, based in San Francisco and Norway. He is known for work in the early days of

digital photography Digital photography uses cameras containing arrays of electronic photodetectors interfaced to an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) to produce images focused by a lens, as opposed to an exposure on photographic film. The digitized image is ...

, as well as his twelve books on photography. He is best known for his 1978 book ''Sweat'', an illustrated history of sweat bathing. His documentary photographs have been exhibited in major institutions around the world, including the

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and the former Lenin Museum in

Prague Prague ( ; ) is the capital and List of cities and towns in the Czech Republic, largest city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of Bohemia. Prague, located on the Vltava River, has a population of about 1.4 million, while its P ...

. Aaland is the author of works of memoir, books featuring his own photojournalism as well as works on digital imaging and various

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products.

Biography

Early years

Aaland was born in

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

and grew up in nearby

Livermore, California Livermore is a city in Alameda County, California. With a 2020 population of 87,955, Livermore is the most populous city in the Tri-Valley, giving its name to the Livermore Valley. It is located on the eastern edge of California's San Francisc ...

. His Norwegian born father worked as a scientist at the

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is a Federally funded research and development centers, federally funded research and development center in Livermore, California, United States. Originally established in 1952, the laboratory now i ...

research facility. Aaland was an

Eagle Scout Eagle Scout is the highest rank attainable in the Scouts BSA program of Scouting America. Since its inception in 1911, only four percent of Scouts have earned this rank after a lengthy review process. The Eagle Scout rank has been earned by over ...

who attended

Livermore High School Founded in 1891, Livermore High School is a public high school located in the city of Livermore, California, United States. It is one of two comprehensive high schools in the Livermore Valley Joint Unified School District, with Granada High S ...

, where he played

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kick (football), kicking a football (ball), ball to score a goal (sports), goal. Unqualified, football (word), the word ''football'' generally means the form of football t ...

. He graduated from

California State University, Chico California State University, Chico (Chico State) is a public university in Chico, California. It was founded in 1887 as one of about 180 "normal schools" founded by state governments in the 19th century to train teachers for the rapidly growing ...

with a major in

photojournalism Photojournalism is journalism that uses images to tell a news story. It usually only refers to still images, but can also refer to video used in broadcast journalism. Photojournalism is distinguished from other close branches of photography (such ...

and was an All-American swimmer on the NCAA Division II championship team.

Beginning career

In 1978, Aaland published his first book, ''Sweat: The Illustrated History and Description of the Finnish Sauna, Russian Bania, Islamic Hammam, Japanese Mushi-buro, Mexican Temescal, and American Indian & Eskimo Sweat Lodge''. The book was the culmination of a three-year travel and photo-journalistic tour of the world's various bathing customs. Aaland continues to be an active proponent and historian of sweat bathing. Aaland published his second nonfiction book, ''County Fair: Portraits'' (1981) after spending nine years traveling the United States visiting county

fair A fair (archaic: faire or fayre) is a gathering of people for a variety of entertainment or commercial activities. Fairs are typically temporary with scheduled times lasting from an afternoon to several weeks. Fairs showcase a wide range of go ...

s. Jon Carroll wrote in ''New West'' magazine, "(County Fair) is a chronicle of people being who they are. These faces become historical." The photographer Mary Ellen Mark said of the book: "Such moving photographs, funny and sad. It's real Americana. Aaland is a latter day Mike Disfarmer." In 1982, Aaland appeared as a guest on the '' David Letterman Show'', sharing work from both ''Sweat'' and ''County Fair''. During an interview in 1981, Aaland was introduced to the newly emerging field of digital photography by renowned photographer

Ansel Adams Ansel Easton Adams (February 20, 1902 – April 22, 1984) was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his Monochrome photography, black-and-white images of the American West. He helped found Group f/64, an association ...

. He contributed articles and photos for other publications such as ''American Photographer'', ''FOTO'', ''American Photo'', ''Digital Creativity'', ''

Newsweek ''Newsweek'' is an American weekly news magazine based in New York City. Founded as a weekly print magazine in 1933, it was widely distributed during the 20th century and has had many notable editors-in-chief. It is currently co-owned by Dev P ...

'', ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...

'', ''

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'', and ''

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''. In 1981, he received the National Art Director's award for photography.

Digital photography instruction

Aaland was one of the first to write about digital photography. In the 1980s he wrote covered the topic in a regular column on the topic for ''American Photographer'', and as West Coast editor of Swedish magazine ''FOTO''. In 1992, Aaland released the book ''Digital Photography''. The book gives instruction and tips on using digital cameras to take unique photographs. He followed that with ''Still Images in Multimedia'' (1996) and then ''Shooting Digital: Pro Tips for Taking Great Pictures with Your Digital Camera'' (2003), which was named by Designer's Bookshelf as "Best Digital Photography Book of the Year for 2004." Aaland was the co-host of the Nordic Light International Festival of Photography between 2011 and 2018. Beginning in 2001, Aaland began publishing a number of guidebooks about using the computer design program

Photoshop Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe for Windows and macOS. It was created in 1987 by Thomas and John Knoll. It is the most used tool for professional digital art, especially in raster graphics editin ...

to enhance digital photography; ''Photoshop Elements Solutions: The Art of Digital Photography'' was followed by second, third, and fourth volumes. He also acted as an unpaid adviser to the development of both the alpha, beta, and final versions of the

Adobe Photoshop Elements Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe for Windows and macOS. It was created in 1987 by Thomas and John Knoll. It is the most used tool for professional digital art, especially in raster graphics editing, ...

application. ''Photoshop CS2 RAW: Using Adobe Camera Raw, Bridge, and Photoshop to Get the Most Out of Your Digital Camera'' (2006) was Aaland's first of two books explaining the graphic file format RAW, which is used by professional photographers. While working as an adviser on beta tests for

Adobe Lightroom Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, often shortened to Lightroom, is an Image organizer, image organization and image editing, editing application developed by Adobe Inc., Adobe and licensed as part of the Adobe Creative Cloud, Creative Cloud suite. It i ...

, Aaland proposed a real-world test of the software by inviting professional photographers to travel to a far-off land where they would use Lightroom. The result of this was ''Photoshop Lightroom Adventure: Mastering Adobe's Next-generation Tool for Digital Photographers'' (2007), which brought professional photographers to Iceland to test the software. Aaland followed up that book the same year with ''Photoshop Lightroom 2 Adventure: Mastering Adobe's Next-generation Tool for Digital Photographers'', which brought professional photographers to Tasmania to show users how photographers work with the Lightroom 2 software.

Memoir and travel work

In a diversion from photography instruction, Aaland published ''The Sword of Heaven: A Five Continent Odyssey to Save the World'' (1999), detailing the six years he spent traveling around the world documenting a peace project initiated by survivors of

Hiroshima is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture in Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 1,199,391. The gross domestic product (GDP) in Greater Hiroshima, Hiroshima Urban Employment Area, was US$61.3 billion as of 2010. Kazumi Matsui has b ...

and led by a

Shinto , also called Shintoism, is a religion originating in Japan. Classified as an East Asian religions, East Asian religion by Religious studies, scholars of religion, it is often regarded by its practitioners as Japan's indigenous religion and as ...

priest. During this time, Aaland dropped brick-sized pieces of a holy Shinto Sword of Heaven into bodies of water around the world to form a protective ring of

kami are the Deity, deities, Divinity, divinities, Spirit (supernatural entity), spirits, mythological, spiritual, or natural phenomena that are venerated in the traditional Shinto religion of Japan. ''Kami'' can be elements of the landscape, forc ...

. Aaland's most recent book, ''The River in My Backyard'', is an illustrated memoir exploring his family history, the murder of his father, and his pilgrimage to

Mount Kailash Mount Kailash (also Kailasa; ''Kangrinboqê'' or ''Gang Rinpoche''; ; ; , ) is a mountain in Ngari Prefecture, Tibet Autonomous Region of China. It lies in the Kailash Range (Gangdisê Mountains) of the Transhimalaya, in the western part ...

. In 1984, ''

'' sent Aaland to Paris to interview filmmaker

Chris Marker Chris Marker (; 29 July 1921 – 29 July 2012) (born ''Christian-François Bouche-Villeneuve'') was a French writer, photographer, documentary film director, multimedia artist and Essay#Film, film essayist. His best known films are ''La Jetée' ...

. The interview was later published as the cover story of ''Digital Creativity''. Following the interview, the two became friends and correspondents. Aaland is currently working on a project that will honor Marker.

Sweat bathing

Aaland, as the author of ''Sweat: The Illustrated History and Description of the Finnish Sauna, Russian Bania, Islamic Hammam, Japanese Mushi-buro, Mexican Temescal, and American Indian & Eskimo Sweat Lodge,'' is recognized as an authority for sweat bathing. In 2014, Aaland organized the Perfect Sweat Summit in San Francisco, bringing together 50 international experts on sweat bathing. Aaland is co-host of the travel documentary series, ''Perfect Sweat'', which combines his career-long interests in photography, travel, and sweat bathing. The seven-episode documentary series is an exploration of bathing traditions around the world and revisits the topic of his 1978 book ''Sweat''. He is also an honorary member of the International Sauna Association (ISA) and the British Sauna Society and a co-founder and board member of the Norwegian Sauna Association (Badstulaug).

Philanthropy

As the president of the International Sauna Aid Foundation, Aaland helped bring mobile saunas to Ukraine, aiding communities affected by war. He also set up saunas for first responders during the

January 2025 Southern California wildfires From January 7 to 31, 2025, a series of 14 destructive wildfires affected the Los Angeles metropolitan area and San Diego County in California, United States. The fires were exacerbated by drought conditions, low humidity, a buildup of ve ...

Bibliography

* ''Sweat: The Illustrated History and Description of the Finnish Sauna, Russian Bania, Islamic Hammam, Japanese Mushi-buro, Mexican Temescal, and American Indian & Eskimo Sweat Lodge'', Capra Press: Santa Barbara, 1978; reprinted, Borgo Press: San Bernardino, 1989; reprinted as ebook, Cyberbohemia Press: San Francisco, 2017. * ''County Fair: Portraits'', Capra Press: Santa Barbara, 1981. * ''The Sword of Heaven: A Five Continent Odyssey to Save the World'', Traveler's Tales: San Francisco, 1999. *''Pilgrimage to Kailash: Tibet's Holy Mountain'', Cyberbohemia Press: San Francisco, 2013. *''The River in My Backyard'', Cyberbohemia Press: San Francisco, 2016.

Photography instruction

* ''Digital Photography'' (with Rudolph Burger), Random House: New York, 1992. ASIN B000KVE4BA * ''Still Images in Multimedia'', Hayden Books: Indianapolis, 1996. * ''Photoshop for the Web'', O'Reilly Media: Cambridge, MA, 1998; 2nd edition, 1999. * ''Photoshop Elements Solutions: The Art of Digital Photography'', Sybex: San Francisco, 2001; 2nd edition, 2002; 3rd edition, 2005; Wiley: Indianapolis, 2005. * ''Shooting Digital: Pro Tips for Taking Great Pictures with Your Digital Camera'', Sybex: San Francisco, 2003; Sybex/Wiley: Indianapolis, 2007. * ''Photoshop CS2 RAW: Using Adobe Camera Raw, Bridge, and Photoshop to Get the Most Out of Your Digital Camera'', O'Reilly Media: Sebastopol, 2006; reprinted as ''Photoshop CS3 RAW: Transform Your RAW Images into Works of Art'', O'Reilly Media: Sebastopol CA, 2008. * ''Photoshop Lightroom Adventure: Mastering Adobe's Next-generation Tool for Digital Photographers'', O'Reilly Media: Sebastopol, 2007; 2nd edition, 2007.

References

External links

''Blogcritics'', Testi, T. Michael. February 12, 2008''Online Photographer'', Ctein. June 8, 2009''Photography Today'' Testi, T. Michael. September 5, 2007Artist websiteO'Reilly Media profile''Shooting Digital'' websiteDavid Letterman appearanceInterview with Leo Laporte
{{DEFAULTSORT:Aaland, Mikkel 1952 births Living people Photographers from San Francisco Hot-air baths People from Livermore, California California State University, Chico alumni American people of Norwegian descent