Outside the City

The scenic path on Pyynikki Ridge. This was a moment before a sprinkle of minute snow pellets from the sky. The lake is still partly covered with ice.

The sun was directly in front of me, so I had to process the image heavily in iPhoto adjusting the tones, enhancing the details and using a fair amount of noise reduction. The result: it now looks more like a painting than a photo.


Google Maps the company have recently began driving around in Finnish cities and taking extensive photos of their streets for their world wide internet service. There's been some discussion in various forums whether they should be doing that right now, when the Finnish nature is still only waking to spring. Everything looks so dejected, colourless and dusty, say the people. Some are afraid that this will affect our tourist industry.


I was reminded of this discussion today, as I was working on the above image. There are always circumstances that can and will intervene and push the ideal towards something unexpected. And that's part of the fun, in my opinion.