One of those gorgeous autumn mornings with crisp air and warm sunlight.

This is one of those shots that I planned like a battle.

Too bad this picture doesn’t have sound. You’d expect to hear the waves, and you’d be partially right. But the second most loudest noise was the sound of shutters. The rock was being photographed by roughly 30 people, most with tripods and huge lenses. Apparently, the rock’s celebrity.

There was a sudden drop of temperature the night before, so in the morning, I immediately grabbed the camera and went hunting for good shots of the landscape. I also got help from snow guns that worked at full blast nearby generating snow for skiing slopes. I don’t know if the slopes got any snow, but everything got covered with very nice frost because of mist the guns generated. All the photographs looked like images taken by an electron microscope, a friend told me.

The forest floor is so full of color in the beginning of autumn!

Probably half the families in the region have a variation of those photographs. I didn’t grow up in the vicinity, and even though I was aware of lake Vuoksa, I’ve never been there until 2015.

For some reason, most of its beauty can only be captured in twilight; three out of four of those shots I made between 4 and 5 in the morning, before, during and just after the sunrise.

The place is called Russian Ridge. It’s in Silicon Valley, less than an hour drive from all the major IT giants’ offices. In the evening, hot air from the mainland meets cold and wet air above the ocean, generating multitude of clouds that the Sun sinks into.

I only had half a day there and I made the most of it.

A typical idyllic vacation shot…

The Canon 50/1.4 lens at its best.

With this shot, I simply got lucky. Walking on the beach in the evening, I had my pocket camera with me and took a bunch of photographs of this gorgeous sunset. Six of them made a nice panorama with a guy fishing. And, of course, the sky.