For most of his working life he was the resident photographer in Atta Village, Adamawa Region.

[citation needed] Samuel Finlak was born in 1958 at Bongor, Ngwa village in Donga-Mantung department, where he trained as a photographer via a correspondence course.

[2] Finlak's work has been exhibited in Yaoundé, Douala, and Bamenda, and in the National Portrait Gallery (London).

Finlak's work has also been discussed by the art historian Graham Clarke.

[4] Clarke comments on the power of Finlak's portraits and the compositional skill of the group images.